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Page 19
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 associated 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 shores.
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 assumed that no
circumstances 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
assurance that the canal 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
Canal the commerce of Europe with the East; but to the American shores
of the Pacific the Isthmian canal 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 Canal. 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 passes close by their ports.
Under this increased importance of the Isthmus, we cannot safely
anticipate for the future the cheap acquiescence which, under very
different circumstances, 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 pass all the approaches to the Isthmus. Control of
a maritime region is insured primarily by a navy; secondarily, by
positions, suitably chosen and spaced 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
Constitution 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
Constitution which is liberal, by embracing all it can be constrained
to imply, and then immediately becomes strict in imposing these
ingeniously contrived fetters.
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