Next to the Americans the English have taken a pride in Admiral Dewey,
and they are in the Asiatic atmosphere our fast friends. They do
not desire that we should give up the Philippines. On the contrary,
they want us to keep the islands, and the more we become interested
in those waters and along their shores, the better. They know that
the world has practically grown smaller and, therefore, the British
Empire more compact; and they find Russia their foe. They see that with
the Pacific Coast our base of operations looking westward, we have
first the Hawaiian Islands for producers and a coal station, naval
arsenal, dockyards for the renovation and repair and replenishment
of our fleets; and they see that we have reserved for ourselves
one of the Ladrones, so that we will have an independent route to
the Philippines. The Japanese have cultivated much feeling against
our possession of Hawaii, the animus being that they wanted it for
themselves; and likewise they are disturbed by our Pacific movement,
anticipating the improvement of the most western of the Alutian
Islands, an admirable station overlooking the North Pacific; all
comprehending with Hawaii, the Alutian Island found most available,
the Ladrone that we shall reserve and the Philippines, we shall have
a Pacific quadrilateral; and this is not according to the present
pleasure and the ambition for the coming days, of Japan. England
would have approved our holding all the islands belonging to the
Spanish, including the Canaries, and Majorca and Minorca and their
neighboring isles in the Mediterranean, and take a pride in us. She
has been of untold and inestimable service to us in the course of the
Spanish War, and her ways have been good for us at Manila, while the
Germans have been frankly against us, the Russians grimly reserved,
and the French disposed to be fretful because they have invested in
Spanish bonds upon which was raised the money to carry on the miserable
false pretense of war with the Cubans. One day while I was on the fine