THE ENTRY OF THE UNITED STATES INTO WORLD POLITICS AS ONE OF THE GREAT POWERS.

TH

'HE Great Powers are a small family. They always must be, for the great are few. It was until recently a provincial family. It called itself the Great Powers of Europe.

The United States have now elbowed their way into it. It is no longer Great Britain, France, Austro-Hungary, Germany and Russia. There is no room in the circle for Italy. The big boy who was hulking in the background, until the last few years, has changed his voice and come forward to claim his own. He proposes henceforth to have his full part in the game of Weltpolitik, and he will, by the right of the stronger. His welcome has not been of the warmest. Germany, particularly, has been cold in her reception of the new member. If one is to believe her daily press, the United States have come in as a power necessarily antagonistic to all the rest,-as America against Europe.1 But be this as it may, the Great Powers are now the Great Powers of the World. It is seen that they may have to enlarge their circle some day. to take in Powers of Asia. Japan already has a title for the next vacancy almost as good as Italy's. China, reconstituted, revivified against its will by Western civilization, may, in this new century, assert her right to a place in line.

American diplomacy, until our war with Spain, had followed in the main the course laid down in Washington's Farewell Address. There had been but one substantial departure from it. That was the promulgation of the Monroe doctrine. But the Monroe doctrine, which a happy accident of European politics made it possible for us to assert, was confined in its immediate scope to American affairs. We justified it by the rule of selfpreservation.

It was, however, an edged tool which Canning put thus into our hands in 1823. Great Britain would have been slow to

1 See the National Zeitung of Dec. 9, 1900.

suggest our setting up what was so near to an American protectorate, had she foreseen even the possibility of such an incident as the Venezuelan controversy of 1895.

That, more than any other thing in our previous history, advanced us to a new place in the world. A nation was to be feared that dared, without any immediate motive of personal interest, to put herself in the path of England, and intimate an intention to hold the ground.

Some of the dispatches which emanated from our State Department at that time indicated, perhaps, that we had not yet been a Great Power long enough to acquire all the company manners of the society into which we were entering. The contrast between the brusque tone in which our Secretary of State emphasized our interest in Venezuela's claims and the suavity with which the Queen, in her speech at the opening of the next Parliament, acknowledged the friendly tender of the good offices of the United States towards a satisfactory adjustment of the controversy, was marked. Indeed, an American dispatch of the last few months may be open to a similar criticism. The South African republics had requested from the United States "intervention," as they phrased it, in their behalf, and this request was communicated by our Secretary of State to Great Britain, together with the expression of the hope of the President that a way to bring about peace might be found, and his readiness "to aid in any friendly manner to promote so happy a result." What we thus did being in pursuance of a request for intervention, and the request having been made by reference part of our dispatch, we might, perhaps, have been considered as intimating the possibility of our taking such a step. The reply from the British foreign office was better phrased. It thanked the President for "his friendly interest" (thus treating our action as meant to be friendly to Great Britain), while stating explicitly that "her Majesty's Government could not accept the intervention of any other power."

The United States, so far as they had engaged in world politics up to the date of President McKinley's first administration, had done so as idealists. They had acted with no immediate view of national aggrandizement.

Our participation in the Pan-American Congress of Panama, in 1826, sprang from a desire, to use Jefferson's words, "to make our hemisphere that of freedom." In that of 1890, at Washington, we were seeking to substitute arbitration for the never-ending succession of revolutions and political assassinations which constitute the public annals of the South American republics.

Our conventions for the suppression of the slave-trade, and the erection of international courts for that purpose, were solely founded on sentiments of humanity.

But wealth necessarily brings new powers and new responsibilities. There is, as Goethe said, a dignity in gold. Our national growth in numbers and riches gradually and inevitably was forcing us into closer relations with foreign courts. Our commercial establishments in Samoa had brought us in 1890 into a tripartite convention with England and Germany, in the nature of a protectorate. Those at Hawaii were fast drawing us towards annexation. Our ministers plenipotentiary at the great capitals had been replaced by ambassadors.

New occasions for American participation in foreign affairs were also furnished by the spread of Christian missions.

It was the American missionary that brought us into such close relations with Hawaii. He created a market for our goods. His children, as they grew up there, became the governing power.

Our share in the present conflict with China is largely, though more remotely, due to what our citizens have done to propagate Christianity there; and there is no other cause for the strained relations between the United States and Turkey, which led to the practical withdrawal of our minister from Constantinople in 1899.

In the New Hebrides, where the Christian natives now number about a quarter of the population, their fellow countrymen threaten them with a war of extermination, and the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions applied to the President, a few weeks ago, for the dispatch of a man of war to protect American interests in that quarter.

Under the influence of all these forces, the United States were being gradually driven into a more active participation in the business of the world, when it was precipitated by the events

of the Cuban insurrection. Still, our controversy with Spain was in its first beginnings idealistic. We were actuated by sentiments of humanity, sympathy and brotherhood. It shocked us to see year after year of bloodshed and rapine pass unchecked, almost within sight of the coast of Florida. At last, in 1897, in the same plain, outspoken (shall we say blunt?) way which we had pursued with Great Britain in regard to the Venezuelan difficulty, we notified Spain that order must be soon restored in Cuba, or we might feel obliged to intervene and restore it ourselves. It was to be, to quote the language of President McKinley's first annual message, "intervention on humanitarian grounds": it was to be rested on "a duty imposed by our obligations to ourselves, to civilization and humanity."

The destruction of the Maine in the harbor of Havana was the real parting of the ways for the American people, as to their foreign policy. It aroused a passion for revenge, which for the time put the sentiment of humanitarianism almost out of mind. Dr. Chalmers wrote a great sermon on "The Expelling Power of a New Affection." There was no room here, in the Spring of 1898, in the heart of the people for any other thought, as regarded Spain, than that she must be made to suffer for a crime which, if she had not committed, her misgovernment had made possible. She denied all responsibility for what had occurred, and offered to submit the matter to arbitration. Eight years before, Congress, by concurrent resolution, had requested the President "to invite from time to time, as fit occasions may arise, negotiations with any government with which the United States has or may have diplomatic relations, to the end that any differences or disputes arising between the two governments which cannot be adjusted by diplomatic agency may be referred to arbitration, and be peaceably adjusted by such means." We did not concur with Spain in thinking this "a fit occasion" for resort to such a mode of adjustment. She made her proposal on March 31, 1898. No reply to it was made by our government, but on April 11th the President sent in his message recommending armed intervention. In ignoring the overture for arbitration, he probably spoke the wishes of the country. Right or wrong, the American people, at that moment, preferred the

use of force. A notice to quit Cuba was given to Spain on April 28th, and we then drove her out of the West Indies. altogether, with the strong hand.

The course of the war took our navy to the Philippines, and here rose the first great landmark of our entrance into world politics. We captured a great city. We found ourselves under obligations to protect large property interests, belonging to citizens of neutral powers. Spain was soon at our mercy. What terms of peace should be prescribed? We concluded to adopt the rule of uti possidetis. In truth, the war had wakened the tiger in us. It was our first real taste of blood: it gave us, that is, our first conquests. The Mexican war had resulted in large purchases of territory, but we can hardly call our acquisition of Porto Rico or the Philippines anything but spoils of victory, notwithstanding the solatium of twenty millions provided for in the treaty of cession.

With Manila an American port, our relations with China became necessarily closer. She, on the other hand, looked with little favor on the passing of the Philippines from the possession of a weak power to that of a great one, already insisting on the policy of the Open Door. The Chinese grew impatient of the dominance of the foreigner. The legations were besieged, and an American army was soon on its way to their relief.

Meanwhile, the Hague Conference had done its splendid work. Here, from the first, the United States found their new station in the world fully recognized. One of their ambassadors headed their delegation, and was accorded an influence second to almost No one can read the clear and full account of the doings of this Conference, for which the public are indebted to Mr. Holls, without observing the weight which was justly attached to whatever fell from the representatives of the United States.

none.

The Hague convention as to the settlement of controversies between nations by mediation, commissions of inquiry, or arbitration, has done much to smooth our way in dealing with foreign affairs. It delegates the droit de force to a secondary place as a rule of practice for the world. We can offer mediation, join in commissions of inquiry, go before an international court, as easily as any power. But unable as we are to wage war, save