Part 2 (1/2)

Whether this pa.s.sage truly represents the deliberate purpose of successive British governments may be doubtful, but it is an accurate enough estimate of the substantial result, as long as our policy continues to be to talk loud and to do nothing,--to keep others out, while refusing ourselves to go in. We neutralize effectually enough, doubtless; for we neutralize ourselves while leaving other powers to act efficiently whenever it becomes worth while.

In a state like our own, national policy means public conviction, else it is but as sounding bra.s.s and a tinkling cymbal. But public conviction is a very different thing from popular impression, differing by all that separates a rational process, resulting in manly resolve, from a weakly sentiment that finds occasional hysterical utterance. The Monroe Doctrine, as popularly apprehended and indorsed, is a rather nebulous generality, which has condensed about the Isthmus into a faint point of more defined luminosity. To those who will regard, it is the harbinger of the day, incompletely seen in the vision of the great discoverer, when the East and the West shall be brought into closer communion by the realization of the strait that baffled his eager search. But, with the strait, time has introduced a factor of which he could not dream,--a great nation midway between the West he knew and the East he sought, spanning the continent he unwittingly found, itself both East and West in one. To such a state, which in itself sums up the two conditions of Columbus's problem; to which the control of the strait is a necessity, if not of existence, at least of its full development and of its national security, who can deny the right to predominate in influence over a region so vital to it? None can deny save its own people; and they do it,--not in words, perhaps, but in act. For let it not be forgotten that failure to act at an opportune moment is action as real as, though less creditable than, the most strenuous positive effort.

Action, however, to be consistent and well proportioned, must depend upon well-settled conviction; and conviction, if it is to be reasonable, and to find expression in a sound and continuous national policy, must result from a careful consideration of present conditions in the light of past experiences. Here, unquestionably, strong differences of opinion will be manifested at first, both as to the true significance of the lessons of the past, and the manner of applying them to the present. Such differences need not cause regret.

Their appearance is a sign of attention aroused; and when discussion has become general and animated, we may hope to see the gradual emergence of a sound and operative public sentiment. What is to be deprecated and feared is indolent drifting, in wilful blindness to the approaching moment when action must be taken; careless delay to remove fetters, if such there be in the Const.i.tution or in traditional prejudice, which may prevent our seizing opportunity when it occurs.

Whatever be the particular merits of the pending Hawaiian question, it scarcely can be denied that its discussion has revealed the existence, real or fancied, of such clogs upon our action, and of a painful disposition to consider each such occurrence as merely an isolated event, instead of being, as it is, a warning that the time has come when we must make up our minds upon a broad issue of national policy.

That there should be two opinions is not bad, but it is very bad to halt long between them.

There is one opinion--which it is needless to say the writer does not share--that, because many years have gone by without armed collision with a great power, the teaching of the past is that none such can occur; and that, in fact, the weaker we are in organized military strength, the more easy it is for our opponents to yield our points.

Closely a.s.sociated with this view is the obstinate rejection of any political action which involves implicitly the projection of our physical power, if needed, beyond the waters that gird our sh.o.r.es.

Because our reasonable, natural--it might almost be called moral--claim to preponderant influence at the Isthmus heretofore has compelled respect, though reluctantly conceded, it is a.s.sumed that no circ.u.mstances can give rise to a persistent denial of it.

It appears to the writer--and to many others with whom he agrees, though without claim to represent them--that the true state of the case is more nearly as follows: Since our nation came into being, a century ago, with the exception of a brief agitation about the year 1850,--due to special causes, which, though suggestive, were not adequate, and summarized as to results in the paralyzing Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,--the importance of the Central American Isthmus has been merely potential and dormant. But, while thus temporarily obscured, its intrinsic conditions of position and conformation bestow upon it a consequence in relation to the rest of the world which is inalienable, and therefore, to become operative, only awaits those changes in external conditions that must come in the fulness of time.

The indications of such changes are already sufficiently visible to challenge attention. The rapid peopling of our territory entails at least two. The growth of the Pacific States enhances the commercial and political importance of the Pacific Ocean to the world at large, and to ourselves in particular; while the productive energies of the country, and its advent to the three seas, impel it necessarily to seek outlet by them and access to the regions beyond. Under such conditions, perhaps not yet come, but plainly coming, the consequence of an artificial waterway that shall enable the Atlantic coast to compete with Europe, on equal terms as to distance, for the markets of eastern Asia, and shall shorten by two-thirds the sea route from New York to San Francisco, and by one-half that to Valparaiso, is too evident for insistence.

In these conditions, not in European necessities, is to be found the a.s.surance that the ca.n.a.l will be made. Not to ourselves only, however, though to ourselves chiefly, will it be a matter of interest when completed. Many causes will combine to retain in the line of the Suez Ca.n.a.l the commerce of Europe with the East; but to the American sh.o.r.es of the Pacific the Isthmian ca.n.a.l will afford a much shorter and easier access for a trade already of noteworthy proportions. A weighty consideration also is involved in the effect upon British navigation of a war which should endanger its use of the Suez Ca.n.a.l. The power of Great Britain to control the long route from Gibraltar to the Red Sea is seriously doubted by a large and thoughtful body of her statesmen and seamen, who favor dependence, in war, upon that by the Cape of Good Hope. By Nicaragua, however, would be shorter than by the Cape to many parts of the East; and the Caribbean can be safeguarded against distant European states much more easily than the line through the Mediterranean, which pa.s.ses close by their ports.

Under this increased importance of the Isthmus, we cannot safely antic.i.p.ate for the future the cheap acquiescence which, under very different circ.u.mstances, has been yielded in the past to our demands.

Already it is notorious that European powers are betraying symptoms of increased sensitiveness as to the value of Caribbean positions, and are strengthening their grip upon those they now hold. Moral considerations undoubtedly count for more than they did, and nations are more reluctant to enter into war; but still, the policy of states is determined by the balance of advantages, and it behooves us to know what our policy is to be, and what advantages are needed to turn in our favor the scale of negotiations and the general current of events.

If the decision of the nation, following one school of thought, is that the weaker we are the more likely we are to have our way, there is little to be said. Drifting is perhaps as good a mode as another to reach that desirable goal. If, on the other hand, we determine that our interest and dignity require that our rights should depend upon the will of no other state, but upon our own power to enforce them, we must gird ourselves to admit that freedom of interoceanic transit depends upon predominance in a maritime region--the Caribbean Sea--through which pa.s.s all the approaches to the Isthmus. Control of a maritime region is insured primarily by a navy; secondarily, by positions, suitably chosen and s.p.a.ced one from the other, upon which as bases the navy rests, and from which it can exert its strength. At present the positions of the Caribbean are occupied by foreign powers, nor may we, however disposed to acquisition, obtain them by means other than righteous; but a distinct advance will have been made when public opinion is convinced that we need them, and should not exert our utmost ingenuity to dodge them when flung at our head. If the Const.i.tution really imposes difficulties, it provides also a way by which the people, if convinced, can remove its obstructions. A protest, however, may be entered against a construction of the Const.i.tution which is liberal, by embracing all it can be constrained to imply, and then immediately becomes strict in imposing these ingeniously contrived fetters.

Meanwhile no moral obligation forbids developing our navy upon lines and proportions adequate to the work it may be called upon to do.

Here, again, the crippling force is a public impression, which limits our potential strength to the necessities of an imperfectly realized situation. A navy ”for defence only” is a popular catchword. When, if ever, people recognize that we have three seaboards, that the communication by water of one of them with the other two will depend in a not remote future upon a strategic position hundreds of miles distant from our nearest port,--the mouth of the Mississippi,--they will see also that the word ”defence,” already too narrowly understood, has its application at points far away from our own coast.

That the organization of military strength involves provocation to war is a fallacy, which the experience of each succeeding year now refutes. The immense armaments of Europe are onerous; but nevertheless, by the mutual respect and caution they enforce, they present a cheap alternative, certainly in misery, probably in money, to the frequent devastating wars which preceded the era of general military preparation. Our own impunity has resulted, not from our weakness, but from the unimportance to our rivals of the points in dispute, compared with their more immediate interests at home. With the changes consequent upon the ca.n.a.l, this indifference will diminish. We also shall be entangled in the affairs of the great family of nations, and shall have to accept the attendant burdens.

Fortunately, as regards other states, we are an island power, and can find our best precedents in the history of the people to whom the sea has been a nursing mother.

POSSIBILITIES OF AN ANGLO-AMERICAN REUNION.

_July, 1894._

[The following article was requested by the Editor of the ”North American Review,” as one of a number, by several persons, dealing with the question of a formal political connection, proposed by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, between the United States and the British Empire, for the advancement of the general interests of the English-speaking peoples. The projects advocated by previous writers embraced: 1, a federate union; 2, a merely naval union or alliance; or, 3, a defensive alliance of a kind frequent in political history.]

The words ”kins.h.i.+p” and ”alliance” express two radically distinct ideas, and rest, for both the privileges and the obligations involved in them, upon foundations essentially different. The former represents a natural relation, the latter one purely conventional,--even though it may result from the feelings, the mutual interests, and the sense of inc.u.mbent duty attendant upon the other. In its very etymology, accordingly, is found implied that sense of constraint, of an artificial bond, that may prove a source, not only of strength, but of irksomeness as well. Its a.n.a.logue in our social conditions is the marriage tie,--the strongest, doubtless, of all bonds when it realizes in the particular case the supreme affection of which our human nature is capable; but likewise, as daily experience shows, the most fretting when, through original mistake or unworthy motive, love fails, and obligation alone remains.

Personally, I am happy to believe that the gradual but, as I think, unmistakable growth of mutual kindly feelings between Great Britain and the United States during these latter years--and of which the recent articles of Sir George Clarke and Mr. Arthur Silva White in the ”North American Review” are pleasant indications--is a sure evidence that a common tongue and common descent are making themselves felt, and are breaking down the barriers of estrangement which have separated too long men of the same blood. There is seen here the working of kins.h.i.+p,--a wholly normal result of a common origin, the natural affection of children of the same descent, who have quarrelled and have been alienated with the proverbial bitterness of civil strife, but who all along have realized--or at the least have been dimly conscious--that such a state of things is wrong and harmful. As a matter of sentiment only, this reviving affection well might fix the serious attention of those who watch the growth of world questions, recognizing how far imagination and sympathy rule the world; but when, besides the powerful sentimental impulse, it is remembered that beneath considerable differences of political form there lie a common inherited political tradition and habit of thought, that the moral forces which govern and shape political development are the same in either people, the possibility of a gradual approach to concerted action becomes increasingly striking. Of all the elements of the civilization that has spread over Europe and America, none is so potential for good as that singular combination of two essential but opposing factors--of individual freedom with subjection to law--which finds its most vigorous working in Great Britain and the United States, its only exponents in which an approach to a due balance has been effected. Like other peoples, we also sway between the two, inclining now to one side, now to the other; but the departure from the normal in either direction is never very great.

There is yet another noteworthy condition common to the two states, which must tend to incline them towards a similar course of action in the future. Partners, each, in the great commonwealth of nations which share the blessings of European civilization, they alone, though in varying degrees, are so severed geographically from all existing rivals as to be exempt from the burden of great land armies; while at the same time they must depend upon the sea, in chief measure, for that intercourse with other members of the body upon which national well-being depends. How great an influence upon the history of Great Britain has been exerted by this geographical isolation is sufficiently understood. In her case the natural tendency has been increased abnormally by the limited territorial extent of the British Islands, which has forced the energies of their inhabitants to seek fields for action outside their own borders; but the figures quoted by Sir George Clarke sufficiently show that the same tendency, arising from the same cause, does exist and is operative in the United States, despite the diversion arising from the immense internal domain not yet fully occupied, and the great body of home consumers which has been secured by the protective system. The geographical condition, in short, is the same in kind, though differing in degree, and must impel in the same direction. To other states the land, with its privileges and its glories, is the chief source of national prosperity and distinction. To Great Britain and the United States, if they rightly estimate the part they may play in the great drama of human progress, is intrusted a maritime interest, in the broadest sense of the word, which demands, as one of the conditions of its exercise and its safety, the organized force adequate to control the general course of events at sea; to maintain, if necessity arise, not arbitrarily, but as those in whom interest and power alike justify the claim to do so, the laws that shall regulate maritime warfare. This is no mere speculation, resting upon a course of specious reasoning, but is based on the teaching of the past. By the exertion of such force, and by the maintenance of such laws, and by these means only, Great Britain, in the beginning of this century, when she was the solitary power of the seas, saved herself from destruction, and powerfully modified for the better the course of history.

With such strong determining conditions combining to converge the two nations into the same highway, and with the visible dawn of the day when this impulse begins to find expression in act, the question naturally arises, What should be the immediate course to be favored by those who hail the growing light, and would hasten gladly the perfect day? That there are not a few who seek a reply to this question is evidenced by the articles of Mr. Carnegie, of Sir George Clarke, and of Mr. White, all appearing within a short time in the pages of the ”North American Review.” And it is here, I own, that, though desirous as any one can be to see the fact accomplished, I shrink from contemplating it, under present conditions, in the form of an alliance, naval or other. Rather I should say: Let each nation be educated to realize the length and breadth of its own interest in the sea; when that is done, the ident.i.ty of these interests will become apparent. This ident.i.ty cannot be established firmly in men's minds antecedent to the great teacher, Experience; and experience cannot be had before that further development of the facts which will follow the not far distant day, when the United States people must again betake themselves to the sea and to external action, as did their forefathers alike in their old home and in the new.

There are, besides, questions in which at present doubt, if not even friction, might arise as to the proper sphere of each nation, agreement concerning which is essential to cordial co-operation; and this the more, because Great Britain could not be expected reasonably to depend upon our fulfilment of the terms of an alliance, or to yield in points essential to her own maritime power, so long as the United States is unwilling herself to a.s.sure the security of the positions involved by the creation of an adequate force. It is just because in that process of adjusting the parts to be played by each nation, upon which alone a satisfactory cooperation can be established, a certain amount of friction is probable, that I would avoid all premature striving for alliance, an artificial and possibly even an irritating method of reaching the desired end. Instead, I would dwell continually upon those undeniable points of resemblance in natural characteristics, and in surrounding conditions, which testify to common origin and predict a common destiny. Cast the seed of this thought into the ground, and it will spring and grow up, you know not how,--first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. Then you may put in your sickle and reap the harvest of political result, which as yet is obviously immature. How quietly and unmarked, like the slow processes of nature, such feelings may be wrought into the very being of nations, was evidenced by the sudden and rapid rising of the North at the outbreak of our civil war, when the flag was fired upon at Fort Sumter. Then was shown how deeply had sunk into the popular heart the devotion to the Union and the flag, fostered by long dwelling upon the ideas, by innumerable Fourth of July orations, often doubtless vainglorious, sometimes perhaps grotesque, but whose living force and overwhelming results were vividly apparent, as the fire leaped from hearthstone to hearthstone throughout the Northern States. Equally in the South was apparent how tenacious and compelling was the grip which the constant insistence upon the predominant claim of the State upon individual loyalty had struck into the hearts of her sons. What paper bonds, treaties, or alliances could have availed then to hold together people whose ideals had drifted so far apart, whose interests, as each at that time saw them, had become so opposed?