itself under our federal forms. It is an oligarchy in the nature of things. Under colonial management it would be peaceful and prosperous. The more it had to do, the more effective such a colonial bureau would become. Every governmental department tends to aggrandize itself. Colonies would demand more colonies. If we have Alaska already and are certain to take Hawaii, why not establish such a colonial bureau and manage them as England manages Hong Kong and Singapore and Jamaica? In the same way we may control Cuba, which falls as a ripe pear into our hands. And Porto Rico must go with Cuba. The Philippines are not very far away. They are nearer to San Francisco than Boston was to Philadelphia in the times of Washington, and the transfer of news is a matter of a few hours only. The Philippines are as large as New England and New York, with a population greater than all the Rocky Mountain country and the Pacific Slope combined. They have a hard population to manage, to be sure, a substratum of Kanakas and Malays, lazy and revengeful, over these a social layer of thrifty Chinese and canny Japanese, then next a Spanish aristocracy and a surface scum of the wanderers of all the world. In the unexplored interiors of the great islands live the wild tribes of negritos, untamed black imps as incapable of self-government or of any other government as so many monkeys. Spain has stood at the gateway of this rich land and taken toll of whatever goes out. This is all she has attempted. We could not do much more, but whatever is possible we can do as well as any one else. If we do not keep the Philippines, they will surely fall into worse hands.

And all these territories are to-day virtually under the American flag. But why stop here? One great need of the world's commerce is a canal across the territory of Nicaragua, and we may seize that turbulent little republic as a guarantee for the security and neutrality of the canal. Then Costa Rica has her coffee fields and

there is wondrous wealth in Guatemala. In the Caroline Islands we would find a good coaling station. We have literary interest in Samoa at least, and in the name of the Ladrones, the islands of the great thieves, we ought to find something suggestive. An open port of our own on the coast of China would give our commerce its proper level of equality. Perhaps Swatow would suffice for us after Russia, and Germany, and France, and England has each made its choice.

From the tall

Then there are the Blue Canaries. peak of Teneriffe we can overlook the entrance to the Mediterranean and keep our watch on the politics of Europe. As England is the assignee of bankrupt Egypt, shall we not seize the assets of bankrupt Spain? To be sure we come in late in the game of territorial expansion. We must take what we can get, and we cannot get much except by force. Still we must have it. For all this and more, according to Theodore Roosevelt and a host of others is our "manifest destiny." To help along "manifest destiny," is the purpose of the war with Spain. The spell is on us and it is the more irresistible because it came unawares. Recently in an address in Boston, Richard Olney, one of the wisest of our public men, who checked the bold, bad British Lion by a bluff as big as the lion's own roar, made a vigorous plea for national expansion. He says:

*

"But it is even a more pitiful ambition for such a country to aim to seclude itself from the world at large, and to live a life as isolated and independent as if it were the only country on the footstool. A nation is as much a member of society as an individual. * * Does a foreign question or controversy present itself, appealing however forcibly to our sympathies or sense of right—what happens the moment it is suggested that the United States should seriously participate in its settlement? A shiver runs through all the ranks of capital, lest the uninterrupted course of money-making be interfered with; the cry of 'Jingo!' comes up in various quarters; advocates of peace at any price make themselves heard from innumerable pulpits and rostrums; while practical politicians invoke the doctrine of the Farewell Address as an absolute bar to all positive action. The upshot is more or less an explosion of sympathy or antipathy at more or less public meetings, and, if the case is a very strong one,

a more or less tardy tender by the Government of its 'moral support.' Is that a creditable part for a great nation to play in the affairs of the world? * * * This country was once the pioneer, and is now the millionaire. It behooves it to recognize the changed conditions, and to realize its great place among the powers of the earth. It behooves it to accept the commanding position belonging to it, with all its advantages on the one hand, and all its burdens on the other. It is not enough for it to vaunt its greatness and superiority, and call upon the rest of the world to admire and be duly impressed. Posing before less favored peoples as an exemplar of the superiority of American institutions may be justified and may have its uses; but posing alone is like answering the appeal of a mendicant by bidding him admire your own sleekness, your own fine clothes and handsome house, and your generally comfortable and prosperous condition. He possibly should do that and be grateful for the spectacle, but what he really asks and needs is a helping hand. The mission of this country, if it has one, and I verily believe it has, is not merely to pose, but to act—and, while always governing itself by prudence and common sense and making its own special interests the first and paramount objects of its care, to forego no fitting opportunity to further the progress of civilization practically as well as theoretically by timely deeds as well as by eloquent words. There is such a thing for a nation as a 'splendid isolation'—as when, for a worthy cause, for its own independence, or dignity, or vital interests, it unshrinkingly opposes itself to a hostile world. But isolation that is nothing but the shirking of the responsibility of high place and great power is simply ignominious.'

"The doors to that 'shining destiny' are open wide," says a late writer in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Shall the Nation pass them or shall it shrink back into itself and leave to other and braver hands the prizes of the future. To broaden out in the field of enterprise and acquisition is the duty of the Republic, to strengthen itself whenever it safely can, to do its part in redeeming the victims of ignorance as well as of cruelty, to gather to itself the riches that will free it from debt, and make its influence paramount in the world's affairs as the greatest part of the Anglo-Saxon brotherhood; to plant itself in the midst of events, and mold them to its mighty purpose."

Such is the dream of American imperialism. Its prizes lie in our hands unasked. The fates have forced them upon us. But before we seize them, now let us ask what it will cost? First, it will cost life and money in rich measure. Kipling tells us the cost of British Admiralty:

We have fed our sea for a thousand years,

And she calls us still unfed,

Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead.

We've strewed our best to the weeds' unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull;
If blood be the price of admiralty
Lord God! we have paid it in full.

There's never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we have manned ;
There's never an ebb goes seaward now

But drops our dead on the sand;

But slinks our dead on the strand forlore

From the Ducies to the Swin;

If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we have paid it in.

We must feed our sea for a thousand years

For that is our doom and pride,

As it was when they sailed with the golden Hind,

Or the wreck that struck last tide;

Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef,

When the ghastly blue-lights flare:

If blood be the price of admiralty,

My God, we have paid it fair.

If we have a navy that can make history we must pay for it as England does, not only in blood but in cold, hard cash. This means more taxes, heavy taxes, more expenditures, more waste. It means the revision of our tax laws, a tariff for revenue only with every element of protection for American industries squeezed out of them. The government will need all it can get. We must manage our colonies that they may yield revenue. We must cherish commerce as we have tried to cherish manufacture, and we must cherish manufacture and agriculture through commerce. Much more of a navy we need to preserve ourselves from imbecility. One victory like that of Manila may save us from a dozen insults, and we must have the means to win such victories.

So far this would not be unmixed evil, perhaps no evil at all. But we must go farther. Imperialism demands the maintenance of a standing army large enough to carry out whatever we undertake. We must wholly

change our pension laws and deal with the veteran on a basis of business not of sentiment. Imperialism leaves no place for sentiment in public affairs. To maintain strong armies the nations of continental Europe sacrifice everything else. The people are loaded with armor till they cannot rise, and they dare not throw it off. Even to-day Italy is on the verge of a revolution, and the cause is the cost of the army. The Italian proverb says that if one throws a stone from a window it will hit a soldier or a priest, and the farmer pays for both.

The whole world must become the range of our interest. We must make every American's house his castle from Kamchatka to Kerguelen. We must be quick to revenge and strong to bluff. We must never fight when the issue is doubtful and never fail to fight if there is a point to be gained. We must give up our foolish notion that America is big enough to maintain a separate basis of coinage, a freeman's scale of wages, a peculiar republican social order different from that of the rest of mankind. We must open our own doors as we would push open the doors of the world. We must change the character of our diplomacy. We must make statecraft a profession. Hitherto we have sent out our embassadors because to do so is the fashion among nations, not because we have anything for them to do. Hereafter they must go out to spread American influences. The plain, blunt, effective truth-telling of our present diplomacy must give way to the power to carry our point. We must not send men to foreign countries because we do not want them at home. The dull incompetence of our consular service must give way to a system of trained agents. And this, too, has its compensating reactions. As our foreign service is made effective it will become dignified. This will help our relations abroad because foreign nations judge us by the quality of our representatives.