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Page 35
Without making a picture to ourselves, without conjuring up
extravagant contingencies, it is not difficult to detect the existence
of conditions, in which are latent elements of future disputes,
identical in principle with those through which we have passed
heretofore. Can we expect that, if unprovided with adequate military
preparation, we shall receive from other states, not imbued with our
traditional habits of political thought, and therefore less patient of
our point of view, the recognition of its essential reasonableness
which has been conceded by the government of Great Britain? The latter
has found capacity for sympathy with our attitude,--not only by long
and close contact and interlacing of interests between the two
peoples, nor yet only in a fundamental similarity of character and
institutions. Besides these, useful as they are to mutual
understanding, that government has an extensive and varied experience,
extending over centuries, of the vital importance of distant regions
to its own interests, to the interests of its people and its commerce,
or to its political prestige. It can understand and allow for a
determination not to acquiesce in the beginning or continuance of a
state of things, the tendency of which is to induce future
embarrassments,--to complicate or to endanger essential welfare. A
nation situated as Great Britain is in India and Egypt scarcely can
fail to appreciate our own sensitiveness regarding the Central
American isthmus, and the Pacific, on which we have such extensive
territory; nor is it a long step from concern about the Mediterranean,
and anxious watchfulness over the progressive occupation of its
southern shores, to an understanding of our reluctance to see the
ambitions and conflicts of another hemisphere approach, even remotely
and indirectly, the comparatively peaceful neighborhoods surrounding
the Caribbean Sea, bearing a threat of disturbance to the political
distribution of power or of territorial occupation now existing.
Whatever our interests may demand in the future may be a matter of
doubt, but it is hard to see how there can be any doubt in the mind of
a British statesman that it is our clear interest now, when all is
quiet, to see removed possibilities of trouble which might break out
at a less propitious season.
Such facility for reaching an understanding, due to experience of
difficulties, is supported strongly by a hearty desire for peace,
traditional with a commercial people who have not to reproach
themselves with any lack of resolution or tenacity in assuming and
bearing the burden of war when forced upon them. "Militarism" is not a
preponderant spirit in either Great Britain or the United States;
their commercial tendencies and their isolation concur to exempt them
from its predominance. Pugnacious, and even warlike, when aroused, the
idea of war in the abstract is abhorrent to them, because it
interferes with their leading occupations, and its demands are alien
to their habits of thought. To say that either lacks sensitiveness to
the point of honor would be to wrong them; but the point must be made
clear to them, and it will not be found in the refusal of reasonable
demands, because they involve the abandonment of positions hastily or
ignorantly assumed, nor in the mere attitude of adhering to a position
lest there may be an appearance of receding under compulsion. Napoleon
I. phrased the extreme position of militarism in the words, "If the
British ministry should intimate that there was anything the First
Consul had not done, _because he was prevented from doing it_, that
instant he would do it."
Now the United States, speaking by various organs, has said, in
language scarcely to be misunderstood, that she is resolved to resort
to force, if necessary, to prevent the territorial or political
extension of European power beyond its present geographical limits in
the American continents. In the question of a disputed boundary she
has held that this resolve--dependent upon what she conceives her
reasonable policy--required her to insist that the matter should be
submitted to arbitration. If Great Britain should see in this
political stand the expression of a reasonable national policy, she is
able, by the training and habit of her leaders, to accept it as such,
without greatly troubling over the effect upon men's opinions that may
be produced by the additional announcement that the policy is worth
fighting for, and will be fought for if necessary. It would be a
matter of course for her to fight for her just interests, if need be,
and why should not another state say the same? The point--of honor, if
you like--is not whether a nation will fight, but whether its claim is
just. Such an attitude, however, is not the spirit of "militarism,"
nor accordant with it; and in nations saturated with the military
spirit, the intimation that a policy will be supported by force raises
that sort of point of honor behind which the reasonableness of the
policy is lost to sight. It can no longer be viewed dispassionately;
it is prejudged by the threat, however mildly that be expressed. And
this is but a logical development of their institutions. The soldier,
or the state much of whose policy depends upon organized force, cannot
but resent the implication that he or it is unable or unwilling to
meet force with force. The life of soldiers and of armies is their
spirit, and that spirit receives a serious wound when it seems--even
superficially--to recoil before a threat; while with the weakening of
the military body falls an element of political strength which has no
analogue in Great Britain or the United States, the chief military
power of which must lie ever in navies, never an aggressive factor
such as armies have been.
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