enough estimate of the substantial result, as long as our policy
continues to be to talk loud and to do nothing,--to keep others out,
while refusing ourselves to go in. We neutralize effectually enough,
doubtless; for we neutralize ourselves while leaving other powers to
act efficiently whenever it becomes worth while.

In a state like our own, national policy means public conviction, else
it is but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. But public
conviction is a very different thing from popular impression,
differing by all that separates a rational process, resulting in manly
resolve, from a weakly sentiment that finds occasional hysterical
utterance. The Monroe Doctrine, as popularly apprehended and indorsed,
is a rather nebulous generality, which has condensed about the Isthmus
into a faint point of more defined luminosity. To those who will
regard, it is the harbinger of the day, incompletely seen in the
vision of the great discoverer, when the East and the West shall be
brought into closer communion by the realization of the strait that
baffled his eager search. But, with the strait, time has introduced a
factor of which he could not dream,--a great nation midway between the
West he knew and the East he sought, spanning the continent he
unwittingly found, itself both East and West in one. To such a state,
which in itself sums up the two conditions of Columbus's problem; to
which the control of the strait is a necessity, if not of existence,
at least of its full development and of its national security, who can
deny the right to predominate in influence over a region so vital to
it? None can deny save its own people; and they do it,--not in words,
perhaps, but in act. For let it not be forgotten that failure to act
at an opportune moment is action as real as, though less creditable
than, the most strenuous positive effort.