themselves confronted with unexpected causes of dissension, conflicts
of interests, whose results may be, on the one hand, war, or, on the
other, abandonment of clear and imperative national advantage in order
to avoid an issue for which preparation has not been made. By no
premeditated contrivance of our own, by the cooperation of a series of
events which, however dependent step by step upon human action, were
not intended to prepare the present crisis, the United States finds
herself compelled to answer a question--to make a decision--not unlike
and not less momentous than that required of the Roman senate, when the
Mamertine garrison invited it to occupy Messina, and so to abandon the
hitherto traditional policy which had confined the expansion of Rome to
the Italian peninsula. For let it not be overlooked that, whether we
wish or no, we _must_ answer the question, we _must_ make the decision.
The issue cannot be dodged. Absolute inaction in such a case is a
decision as truly as the most vehement action. We can now advance, but,
the conditions of the world being what they are, if we do not advance
we recede; for there is involved not so much a particular action as a
question of principle, pregnant of great consequences in one direction
or in the other.

Occasion of serious difficulty, indeed, should not arise here. Unlike
the historical instance just cited, the two nations whose interests
have come now into contact--Great Britain and the United States--are
so alike in inherited traditions, habits of thought, and views of
right, that injury to the one need not be anticipated from the
predominance of the other in a quarter where its interests also
predominate. Despite the heterogeneous character of the immigration
which the past few years have been pouring into our country, our
political traditions and racial characteristics still continue
English--Mr. Douglas Campbell would say Dutch, but even so the stock