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for the Electoral Colleges. On the one hand, by temperament and tradition, the people of the United States are eminently conservative in foreign affairs. They are easily moved by bluster and patriotic jingoism, especially at elections; and at a time, not distant, though happily now past, they rather enjoyed the sport of twisting the lion's tail. But the great steadygoing mass of middle-class people, mostly of Anglo-Saxon descent, who are the real rulers of the comglomerate nationality, have been brought up to a rooted belief in American political isolation. They would fight at any time to keep European aggression out of the two Americas; but, apart from this, they have a deep distrust of mixing themselves up with the tangled politics of the older nations. have always endeavored to persuade themselves that America was a separate enclave, and that it could survey the wars and diplomacies of Europe and Asia with serene indifference, listening unmoved to the far-off echoes of strife that rolled faintly across the Atlantic and the Pacific. But times have changed. For political purposes the Ocean has narrowed to a stream. The United States is itself a country with foreign dependencies, and in the Philippines it has its finger close to the throbbing pulse of Asia. It has ceased to be self-contained and self-dependent. With a gigantic export trade, still growing, which may presently be as large as that of all Europe, it cannot be indifferent to the political conditions of those vast reservoirs of humanity in which it must find its markets. Its citizens begin to discern the close relation between international politics and international trade; and they are learning the lesson, mastered so reluctantly by ourselves through the troubled centuries, that no community, however great and however powerful, can release itself from the play of the

forces that hold the peoples of this planet together or apart.

This truth is being brought slowly home to the American intelligence; but it is received doubtfully, and with more anxiety than enthusiasm. The AngloSaxon, utriusque juris, is essentially an isolation-loving, individualistic, person, whose aim is to "keep himself to himself," and to meddle with nobody who does not meddle with him. He likes to get behind a ring-fence, when he can. In that umbrageous heart of Sussex, where so much of immemorial antiquity still lingers, you may sometimes find an ancient farm, spaced off from the whispering woodlands by a broad belt of untilled pasture. It is the mark of the primitive hamlet community founded some thirteen centuries ago by a family of Teutonic or Scandinavian Colonists. Here they settled, these pioneers from beyond the Northern Sea; they built their dwellinghouses, their granaries, their cattlebyres; and round the whole they drew their tun or zareeba-like hedge of thorn and box, girt by the wide zone of rough grass and weed, that islanded them from an intrusive world.

The characteristic has survived through the ages. In national, as well as domestic, affairs, non-intervention, laissez-faire, the policy of letting alone, and individual effort, are the aims of the race. They are aims which have been frustrated from generation to generation, constantly abandoned in practice, yet perpetually asserted in theory. There is some truth in the reproach of foreign critics that we have gone about the earth, interfering with everybody, and protesting all the while that we only wanted to be allowed to get on with our own business and had no concern with other people's quarrels. But the fact is that almost every great English statesman and ruler, while genuinely anxious to limit the sphere of British activity abroad,

has found himself compelled to enlarge it. A great nation is irresistibly drawn into the cosmic states-system, and must play its part there, if it would maintain its dignity and safety. China lies at the mercy of foreign aggression, as the penalty for living too long in a world of its own.

Mr. Roosevelt was among the first of distinguished American public men to understand the application of these facts to the United States. Several years ago he put the case boldly:

We cannot be huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters, who care nothing for what happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own end; for as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests, and are brought into closer and closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we must build up our power without our own borders. We must build the Isthmian canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage, which will enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny of the oceans of the East and West.

He has gone even further. He has thrust aside the plea of non-interference, of cosmopolitan quietism, and preached openly the doctrine which Rudyard Kipling has thrown into verse. Mr. Roosevelt is quite willing to "take up the White Man's burden." He has disclaimed all sympathy with that "mock humanitarianism which would prevent the great free, libertyand order-loving races of the earth from doing their duty in the world's waste places, because there must needs be some rough surgery at first." His general view is that "it is for the interests of mankind to have the higher, supplant the lower, life."

In the first instance, the founders of the new American Imperialism were content with the Spanish islands. The Americans are in the Philippines on

much the same moral title as ourselves in Egypt. They blundered in, under a sudden pressure of events, not very clearly seeing what they were doing, not at all anxious to make a conquest; and, having pushed themselves into the country, and rendered themselves responsible for its future, just as we have done in Egypt, they have to remain; not only that, but they must remain under conditions which will ensure that the Filipinos do not relapse into anarchy or barbarism or mediæval, priest-ridden, stagnation. The group must become an integral part of the modern civilized world. It was one of the weaknesses of the Democrats at the recent election that they would not frankly accept the situation. They fenced with it, in their Convention programme, in a fashion at once maladroit and disingenuous:

We oppose, as fervently as did George Washington himself, an indefinite, irresponsible, discretionary and vague absolutism and a policy of colonial exploitation, no matter where or by whom invoked or exercised. Wherever there may exist a people incapable of being governed under American laws, in consonance with the American Constitution, that people ought not to be a part of the American domain. We insist that we ought to do for the Filipinos what we have already done for the Cubans, and it is our duty to make that promise now; and, upon suitable guarantees of protection to citizens of our own and other countries, resident there at the time of Our withdrawal, set the Filipino people upon their feet, free and independent, to work out their own destiny.

This passage bears a rather curious resemblance to the woolly declarations of some prominent English Liberals during the first three or four years of our occupation of Egypt. The Policy of Scuttle, as it was sometimes called, was greatly disliked in England,

and it is no more popular in the United States. Sensible Americans know that the assertion of it is both undignified and meaningless. It would be cowardly to run away from the Philippines, and it would also be impossible. If the Democrats came in, they would not be able to "set the Filipino people upon their feet, free and independent," and they could not attempt to do it. The electors wisely preferred a statesman, who does not make these ridiculous pretences, and who regards the possession of the over-sea territories, not as a disagreeable burden, to be dropped as soon as circumstances allow, but as

an

honorable obligation, to be discharged with zeal and fidelity.

But the Imperialist appetite vient en mangeant; the scope of Imperialist activity widens with each fresh accession. There is no help for it, and so the Americans are beginning to understand, with mingled elation and apprehension. They are now a Colonial Power, with special interests in the freedom of the seas, in addition to that of having more cargoes afloat upon it than any other people except ourselves. Therefore anything that interferes with the even flow of maritime commerce touches them closely. The United States is the natural chief and champion of neutral nations in time of war; for its gigantic export and import trade is still to a great extent carried in neutral bottoms. It is not possible for the Americans to survey a conflict on the seas, between two or more of the Naval Powers, with indifference. The Russians entered upon their war against Japan with the tranquil confidence that they would be permitted to practise the kind of nautical highway robbery, more or less recognized in the chaotic muddle of precedents and principles, which is dignified by the name of International Law. They have had to be reminded that this was an error, and to discover that

the "rights" of a belligerent do not include the right to steal and the right to commit assault with violence.

We have done something ourselves, as in the case of the Peterburg and the Smolensk, to enforce the lesson; but we have moved tentatively and timidly, and with an evident desire not to raise fundamental questions. For, to speak plainly, the bullying code which the Russians are trying to apply is largely of our creation; the "Right of Search," with its confiscatory provisions, is very dear to our statesmen. They are still convinced that, if ever we come to a maritime war, we shall continue to be, in the strategic sense, the aggressors; that we shall be able to take the offensive, with the old swaggering superiority; that with our commanding force we shall seal up and blockade all the coasts of our enemy; and that one of our main duties will be to chastise the neutrals who seek to bring him aid and comfort. We suppose ourselves to represent the overwhelming navy that can sweep the seas clear for our own commerce, with little interest in neutrals beyond that of seeing that they do not annoy us or interfere with our operations. Our traditional policy is to vindicate the claims of the maritime belligerent to do very much as he pleases, or as he can. So we have felt a little awkwardness in explaining to Russia that these examinations, and overhaulings, and visitations, and condemnations, though we practised them ourselves industriously in the days of sailing frigates and corvettes, are no longer tolerable.

The opportunity of performing this service to civilized humanity lies with the United States; and it seems that President Roosevelt and his able Secretary of State do not propose to miss it. Mr. Hay's Note, protesting against the Russian seizures of neutral vessels, is in some sense the beginning of an epoch. It is the most vigorous

and direct assertion of the rights of neutrals which has been formulated for many years. The State Secretary emphatically refuses to admit the extravagant pretension that Russia, or any other Power, can add fresh articles to the Law of Nations by issuing a proclamation or obtaining a "decision" in one of its own prize courts; he repudiates the extensions which it has been sought to give to the doctrine of conditional contraband, and the claim which Russia has set up to establish a kind of paper blockade of the trade routes of the world. The protest has had its effect. Russia, after some demur, was forced to abandon her extreme claims, and to place the question of conditional contraband on a footing which will at least relieve neutral shipping from a repetition of the series of threatening incidents that occurred during the opening months of the war.

But Mr. Roosevelt does not intend to stop at this point. He aspires to protect trading nations from similar dangers in future. Hence his invitation to the Powers to combine in another Hague Conference. When we consider the traditions of American diplomacy, the standing dislike of the people of the Republic to go out of their way to court foreign complications, and their anxiety to avoid being involved in the mesh of European politics, this bold initiative must be deemed extremely remarkable. might well be regarded as a new stage in the history of the United States, perhaps even the history of the world; provided, of course, that it is followed up. Some shrewd observers tell us that it was mere playing to the American peace gallery, that it was "good politics" for the President to counter the accusation of being a fire-eater and a militarist by coming forward as the promoter of international concord. One cannot think so. In the first

It

place, it is not Mr. Roosevelt's way; in the second, it would seem that, having committed himself to this Conference, he would not care to incur the discredit of a fiasco. To the final "Act" of the Hague Convention, various pious opinions were added as a postscript. One of these was that a Conference "in the near future" should consider the rights and duties of neutrals, and another, that it should discuss the inviolability of private property at sea. On this last point, official American opinion may be said to be committed. The President, in his Message to Congress a year ago, registered his adhesion to "this humane and beneficent principle," and he has been supported by Resolutions in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It will not be the fault of the American State Department if the Conference separates without coming to an agreement on such a revision and definition of the rules of International Law as will safe-guard neutral seaborne commerce in time of war.

Whether this result is reached depends, to a large extent, upon the government and people of this coun try. In the last number of this Review, Sir John Macdonell' shows that it is high time for us to reconsider our established policy in this respect. The statements of Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Balfour at the close of last Session, and the whole course of our recent diplomacy, demonstrate that tenderness towards belligerents and harshness towards neutrals still determine our attitude. But, as Sir John explains, this sentiment is a little out of date. It takes no account of the changed conditions of the past few years. It assumes, not only that we are the first of Naval Powers, but that our former predominance can be maintained. When we were searching car

1 "The Rights and Duties of Neutrals," in The Living Age for Dec. 3, 1904.

goes in the Baltic in defiance of the Armed Neutrality, or when we seized the whole Danish Fleet and brought it captive into the Channel, we had enemies but no real rival. And from the peace of 1815 until the later seventies there was only one foreign fleet, or at the most two, worth talking about in relation to our own.

All this is now changed. There are seven great Naval Powers in Europe, Asia, and America. One of these, the United States, will, in a few years, possess a maritime force not very far behind ours; it has a much larger taxable population, a greater iron and steel production, a longer coast-line on two oceans, more available wealth, and less occasion to expend its resources on military establishments. Some of the same considerations apply to Germany; with a great mercantile shipping, a numerous coastal population, a vast metal industry, and unbounded enterprise and ambition, it may provide itself with a navy nearer to ours than any that has been known since Trafalgar. And not far below these will follow France, Japan, Russia, all firstclass Naval Powers; not to mention Italy, and quite possibly, at no very distant date, China. We may, and must, keep the first place. But we shall not sweep the seas as if no other flag existed. And if we endeavored to enforce the system which Lord Stowell crystallized in his prize-courts, and which Russia has been endeavoring to apply, we might find ourselves faced by a much more formidable combination than any we could possibly have encountered a hundred years, or even thirty years, ago. Meanwhile we do the chief carrying trade of the world; and any belligerent, as this Eastern war has shown, who begins to exercise the Right of Search, is likely to harass and injure a dozen British merchants for every one belonging to a foreign nation. In other words, our interests are

now on the side of the neutrals, not against them. Are we to repeat our non possumus of Brussels in 1874 and The Hague of 1899, and declare that we cannot discuss the subject, for fear that the liberty of our captains and admirals might be unduly hampered in war time? Or shall we join with the United States in securing the rights of private traders and putting an end to the oppressive practices that have come down from a period when there was no law of the sea but that of the bigger crew and the heavier gun? If we accept the latter alternative, most of the Continental Powers would probably do the same; it would not greatly matter if they did not. The Anglo-Saxon navies could enforce the law of the sea against all the world, if they chose.

The mere suggestion that the armed force of the two English-speaking nations could be employed for such purposes would be indignantly repelled by many Americans. It is none of our business, they would say, to police the universe or to act as guardians of the rights of humanity. The task may be a noble one, but it is not cast upon us. We prefer to look after our own affairs, and to defend our own interests when they are directly attacked. It remains to be seen whether President Roosevelt will be able, or willing, to convince his countrymen that mere immobility and passivity may sometimes be as bad a defence in peace as in war. A strong initiative is often necessary. Mr. Roosevelt and his Cabinet have themselves taken it very boldly, and perhaps rather unscrupulously, in Panama, energetically enough against Turkey and Morocco, somewhat more cautiously, but with firmness, in regard to Manchuria. So far they have received the undoubted support of their fellow-citizens. The Democrats made nothing out of their impeachment of the President on these

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