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Page 48
Despite internal jealousies and friction on the continent of Europe,
perhaps even because of them, the solidarity of the European family
therein contained is shown in this great common movement, the ultimate
beneficence of which is beyond all doubt, as evidenced by the British
domination in India and Egypt, and to which the habit of arms not only
contributes, but is essential. India and Egypt are at present the two
most conspicuous, though they are not the sole, illustrations of
benefits innumerable and lasting, which rest upon the power of the
sword in the hands of enlightenment and justice. It is possible, of
course, to confuse this conclusion, to obscure the real issue, by
dwelling upon details of wrongs at times inflicted, of blunders often
made. Any episode in the struggling progress of humanity may be thus
perplexed; but looking at the broad result, it is indisputable that
the vast gains to humanity made in the regions named not only once
originated, but still rest, upon the exertion and continued
maintenance of organized physical force.
The same general solidarity as against the outside world, which is
unconsciously manifested in the general resumption of colonizing
movements, receives particular conscious expression in the idea of
imperial federation, which, amid the many buffets and reverses common
to all successful movements, has gained such notable ground in the
sentiment of the British people and of their colonists. That immense
practical difficulties have to be overcome, in order to realize the
ends towards which such sentiments point, is but a commonplace of
human experience in all ages and countries. They give rise to the
ready sneer of impossible, just as any project of extending the sphere
of the United States, by annexation or otherwise, is met by the
constitutional lion in the path, which the unwilling or the
apprehensive is ever sure to find; yet, to use words of one who never
lightly admitted impossibilities, "If a thing is necessary to be done,
the more difficulties, the more necessary to try to remove them." As
sentiment strengthens, it undermines obstacles, and they crumble
before it.
The same tendency is shown in the undeniable disposition of the
British people and of British, statesmen to cultivate the good-will of
the United States, and to draw closer the relations between the two
countries. For the disposition underlying such a tendency Mr. Balfour
has used an expression, "race patriotism,"--a phrase which finds its
first approximation, doubtless, in the English-speaking family, but
which may well extend its embrace, in a time yet distant, to all those
who have drawn their present civilization from the same remote
sources. The phrase is so pregnant of solution for the problems of the
future, as conceived by the writer, that he hopes to see it obtain the
currency due to the value of the idea which it formulates. That this
disposition on the part of Great Britain, towards her colonies and
towards the United States, shows sound policy as well as sentiment,
may be granted readily; but why should sound policy, the seeking of
one's own advantage, if by open and honest means, be imputed as a
crime? In democracies, however, policy cannot long dispute the sceptre
with sentiment. That there is lukewarm response in the United States
is due to that narrow conception which grew up with the middle of the
century, whose analogue in Great Britain is the Little England party,
and which in our own country would turn all eyes inward, and see no
duty save to ourselves. How shall two walk together except they be
agreed? How shall there be true sympathy between a nation whose
political activities are world-wide, and one that eats out its heart
in merely internal political strife? When we begin really to look
abroad, and to busy ourselves with our duties to the world at large in
our generation--and not before--we shall stretch out our hands to
Great Britain, realizing that in unity of heart among the
English-speaking races lies the best hope of humanity in the doubtful
days ahead.
In the determination of the duties of nations, nearness is the most
conspicuous and the most general indication. Considering the American
states as members of the European family, as they are by traditions,
institutions, and languages, it is in the Pacific, where the westward
course of empire again meets the East, that their relations to the
future of the world become most apparent. The Atlantic, bordered on
either shore by the European family in the strongest and most advanced
types of its political development, no longer severs, but binds
together, by all the facilities and abundance of water communications,
the once divided children of the same mother; the inheritors of Greece
and Rome, and of the Teutonic conquerors of the latter. A limited
express or a flying freight may carry a few passengers or a small bulk
overland from the Atlantic to the Pacific more rapidly than modern
steamers can cross the former ocean, but for the vast amounts in
numbers or in quantity which are required for the full fruition of
communication, it is the land that divides, and not the sea. On the
Pacific coast, severed from their brethren by desert and mountain
range, are found the outposts, the exposed pioneers of European
civilization, whom it is one of the first duties of the European
family to bind more closely to the main body, and to protect, by due
foresight over the approaches to them on either side.
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