uce ships whose shells sweep an American
squadron off the face of the sea.

It had been known for years that two monster ships of the _Dreadnought_
type were being built for Brazil in the English shipyards. No one knew
where Brazil was going to get the money to pay for the battleships or
what the Brazilian fleet wanted with such huge ships, but they continued
to be built. It was generally supposed that England was building them as
a sort of reserve for her own fleet; but once again was public opinion
mistaken. Only those who years before had raised a warning protest and
been ridiculed for seeing ghosts, proved to be right. They had
prophesied long ago that these ships were not intended for England, but
for her ally, Japan.

The vessels were finished by the end of June and during the last days of
the month the Brazilian flag was openly hoisted on board the _San Paulo_
and _Minas Geraes_, as they were called, the English shipbuilders having
indignantly refused to sell them to the United States on the plea of
feeling bound to observe strict neutrality. The two armored battleships
started on their voyage across the Atlantic with Brazilian crews on
board; but when they arrived at a spot in the wide ocean where no
spectators were to be feared, they were met by six transport-steamers
conveying the Japanese crews for the two warships, no others than the
thousand Japs who had been landed at Rio de Janeiro as coolies for the
Brazilian coffee plantations in the summer of 1908. They had been
followed in November by four hundred more.

We were greatly puzzled at the time over this striking exception to the
Japanese political programme of concentrating streams of immigrants on
our Pacific coasts. Without a word of warning a thousand Japanese
coolies were shipped to Brazil, where they accepted starvation wages
greatly to the disgust and indignation of the German and Italian
workmen--not to speak of the lazy Brazilians themselves. This isolated
advance of the Japs into Brazil struck observers as a dissipation of
energy, but the Government in Tokio continued to carry out its plans,
undisturbed by our expressions of astonishment. Silently, but no less
surely, the diligent hands of the coolies and the industrious spirit of
Japanese merchants in Brazil created funds with which the two warships
were paid at least in part. The public interpreted it as an act of
commendable patriotism when, in June, the one thousand four hundred Japs
turne