interest, not of conceded right. Already France and Great Britain are
giving to ports held by them a degree of artificial strength uncalled
for by their present importance. They look to the near future. Among
the islands and on the mainland there are many positions of great
importance, held now by weak or unstable states. Is the United States
willing to see them sold to a powerful rival? But what right will she
invoke against the transfer? She can allege but one,--that of her
reasonable policy supported by her might.

Whether they will or no, Americans must now begin to look outward. The
growing production of the country demands it. An increasing volume of
public sentiment demands it. The position of the United States, between
the two Old Worlds and the two great oceans, makes the same claim,
which will soon be strengthened by the creation of the new link joining
the Atlantic and Pacific. The tendency will be maintained and increased
by the growth of the European colonies in the Pacific, by the advancing
civilization of Japan, and by the rapid peopling of our Pacific States
with men who have all the aggressive spirit of the advanced line of
national progress. Nowhere does a vigorous foreign policy find more
favor than among the people west of the Rocky Mountains.

It has been said that, in our present state of unpreparedness, a
trans-isthmian canal will be a military disaster to the United States,
and especially to the Pacific coast. When the canal is finished, the
Atlantic seaboard will be neither more nor less exposed than it now is;
it will merely share with the country at large the increased danger of
foreign complications with inadequate means to meet them. The danger of
the Pacific coast will be greater by so much as the way between it and
Europe is shortened through a passage which the stronger maritime power
can control. The danger will lie not merely in the greater facility for