eal also denounced
arbitrary acts. "The native," it is said, "is arrested and imprisoned
for months without a trial, and this with all the less forbearance, as
the prisoner is always utilized as an economic laborer." The justice of
this appeal and prompt reception and accord with the French conscience
was evidenced in the public announcement to the natives by Gen.
Gallieni, the Governor of Madagascar, a few months later, that forced
labor would be discontinued after January 1, 1900, and thereafter they
could work for whom they pleased, and if for government they would be
paid wages agreed to.

It is needless to say that this proclamation was received by the natives
with tumultuous rejoicing. Forced labor is now abolished, and the
natives rejoice in a jubilee from a servitude the most galling.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The adaptability of the Negro to conditions that are at the time
inevitable has been the paladium that has sustained and multiplied him
amid the determined prejudice that has ever assailed him. The Indian,
unassimilating, combatted the prejudice of caste by physical force, and
has been well nigh extinguished, while the Negro has bowed to the
inevitable with the mental reservation to rise to a higher recognition
by a persistent assimilation of the forces that disenthralled and
exalted the Saxon.

The foregoing chapter, indicating the policy of the French in their
occupation and dealing with Madagascar, the planting of a nation's
authority and establishing a colony on the ruins of a weaker power, or
of subject races, under the plea of humanity, or through the chicanery
of diplomacy, has ever been the rule when territory has been desired by
a stronger power. The proximity of Cuba to the States, and Spanish
misrule of that island, and also of the Philippines, were the "open
sesame," it is alleged, that beckoned the armed force of the United
States to take possession. But in truth the Spanish jewel, Cuba, shone
in the distance, "so near, and yet so far"--so near for mischievous
complication, and so far for material and diplomatic control. With a
vicious administration by a nation of decaying prestige were all
elements promising success to the invader. The covert and dastardly
destruction of the U. S. warship "Maine" in Cuban waters, the offspring
of Spanish suspicion of American designs, was all, and more than
required, to inaugurate a "causi belli" and complete the conquest of the
island. To claim that thes