Carl Russell Fish

“ But, before Camara was called home, the public were watching his advance against the little American fleet at Manila, with an anxiety perhaps greater than Dewey's own. Nothing in modern war equals in dramatic tension the deadly, slow, inevitable approach of a fleet from one side of the world against its enemy on the other. Both beyond the reach of friendly help, each all powerful until it meets its foe, their home countries have to watch the seemingly never coming, but nevertheless certain, clash, which under modern conditions means victory or destruction. ”

“ Perhaps no American document relating to diplomacy ever before made so great a stir in the world. Its unexpectedness enhanced its effect, even in the United States, for the public had not been sufficiently aware of the shaping of this international episode to be psychologically prepared for the imminence of war. Unlike most Anglo-American diplomacy, this had been a long-range negotiation, with notes exchanged between the home offices instead of personal conferences. People blenched at the thought of war; stocks fell; the attention of the whole world was arrested. ”

“ All thoughtful men saw that a new era needed a new policy; the wiser, however, were not willing to give up all that they had acquired in the experience of the past. They remembered that the separation of the continents was not proclaimed as an end in itself but as a means of securing American purposes. Those national purposes had been: first, the securing of the right of self-government on the part of the United States; second, the securing of the right of other nations to govern themselves. ”

“ To reject the offer of a country whose assistance was absolutely necessary to the safety of the United States, and to declare the American case against her as well as against the more menacing forces whose attack she alone could prevent, required a nerve and poise which could come only from ignorant foolhardiness or from absolute knowledge of the facts. The self-assurance of Adams was well founded, and no general on the field of battle ever exhibited higher courage. ”

“ The innumerable and intimate bonds of friendship and interest which would thus have to be broken merely because of an insignificant jog in a boundary remote from both the nations made war between the United States and Great Britain seem absolutely inconceivable, until people realized that neither country could yield without an admission of defeat both galling to national pride and involving fundamental principles of conduct and policy for the future. ”

“ In the United States, which had always rejected the idea of balance of power, and which only in Asia, and to a limited degree, assented to the concert of powers, one or the other of these two views was urged by all those who saw that the United States had actually become a world power, that isolation no longer existed, and that a policy of nonintervention could not keep us permanently detached from the current of world politics. ”

“ Not all those who advocated the retention of the Philippines did so reluctantly or under the pressure of a feeling of necessity. In the very first settlers of our country, the missionary impulse beat strong. John Winthrop was not less intent than Cromwell on the conquest of all humanity by his own ideals; only he believed the most efficacious means to be the power of example instead of force. Just now there was a renewed sense throughout the Anglo-Saxon public that it was the duty of the civilized to promote the civilization of the backward, and the Cromwellian method waxed in popularity. ”

“ If Canning saw liberal England as a perpetual minority in absolutist Europe, Adams saw republican America as a perpetual inferior to monarchical England. Although England, with Canada, the West Indies, and her commerce, was a great American power, Adams believed that the United States, the oldest independent nation in America, with a government which gave the model to the rest, could not admit her to joint, leadership, for her power was in, not of, America, and her government was monarchical. ”

“ The sea is not an American lake, nor do the Americans wish it to be such. In time, as the surrounding countries become better able to stand alone, direct interference on the part of the United States will doubtless become less than it is today. There is, however, practically no present opportunity for a non-American power to establish itself and to threaten the commerce or the canal of the United States. ”

“ Rumors of a projected raid by the fast Spanish armored cruisers kept the coast cities in a state of high excitement, and many sought, by petition and political pressure, to compel the Navy Department to detach vessels for their defense. The Naval War Board, however, had to remember that it must protect not only the coast but commerce also, and that the United States was at war not to defend herself but to attack. Cuba was the objective; and Cuba must be cut off from Spain by blockade, and the seas must be made safe for the passage of the American Army. ”

“ American democracy, now confident of its growing strength, believed that the happiness of the people and the success of the institutions of the United States would prove a loadstone which would bring under the flag all peoples of the New World, while those of the Old World would strike off their shackles and remold their governments on the American pattern. ”

“ Not strong enough to control the policy of the various countries, these men at least countered those chauvinists who urged that hostility to the United States was a first duty compared with which the danger of non-American interference might be neglected.
Confronted by this divided attitude, the United States sought to win over but not to compel. Nothing more completely met American views than that each power should maintain for itself the principles of the Monroe Doctrine by excluding foreign influences. ”

“ General Grant can hardly be regarded as a visionary, and yet in 1873 in his second inaugural address, he had said: "Commerce, education, and rapid transit of thought and matter by telegraph and steam have changed all this.... I believe that our Great Maker is preparing the world in His own good time, to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required."
Quietly, without general interest, or even particular motive, the United States had accepted its share in handling many such world problems. ”

“ Throughout American history there has been a powerful tradition of friendliness between Russia and the United States, yet surely no two political systems have been in the past more diametrically opposed. The chief ground for friendship has doubtless been the great intervening distance which has reduced intercourse to a minimum. Some slight basis for congeniality existed in the fact that the interests of both countries favored a similar policy of freedom upon the high seas. What chiefly influenced the public mind, however, was the attitude which Russia had taken during the Civil War. ”

“ The really wise saw that the important thing was to determine the kind of education which China should receive, and in solving this problem the palm of wisdom must be given to the missionaries who represented the great Christian societies of Europe and America. To small-minded statesmen it seemed that the situation called for conquest. No nation was willing to be late at the division, if division it was to be; while if China was to awake, the European powers felt that she should awake shackled. ”

“ George Canning, the English foreign minister, soon discovered that this hint foreshadowed a new congress to be devoted especially to the American problem. Spain was to be restored to her sovereignty, but was to pay in liberal grants of American territory to whatever powers helped her. Canning is regarded as the ablest English foreign minister of the nineteenth century; at least no one better embodied the fundamental aspirations of the English people. He realized that liberal England would be perpetually a minority in a united Europe, as Europe was then organized. ”

“ When in 1907 Roosevelt sent the American battleship squadron on a voyage around the world, the expedition not only caused a pleased self-consciousness at home but perhaps impressed foreign nations with the fact that the United States now counted not only as a potential but as an actual factor in world affairs.
Greater popular interest, if one may judge from relative achievement, was aroused by the proposal to substitute legal for military battles. The United States had always been disposed to submit to arbitration questions which seemed deadlocked. ”

“ In 1861 Seward said that he saw Russia and Great Britain building on the Arctic Ocean outposts on territory which should belong to his own country, and that he expected the capital of the great federal republic of the future would be in the valley of Mexico. Yet he nevertheless retained the sentiment he had expressed in 1846: "I would not give one human life for all the continent that remains to be annexed." The Civil War prevented for four years any action regarding expansion, and the same conspiracy which resulted in the assassination of Lincoln brought Seward to the verge of the grave. ”

“ The experience with volunteers in the Civil War had given almost universal confidence that the American people could constitute themselves an army at will. The presence of several heroes of that war in succession in the position of commander-in-chief of the army had served to diffuse a sense of security among the people. Here and there military drill was introduced in school and college, but the regular army attracted none of the romantic interest that clung about the navy, and the militia was almost totally neglected. ”

“ Not only did the United States allow itself a closer intimacy with this new Pacific power than it would have done with a state of Europe, but it exhibited a greater freedom in dealing with the European powers themselves in the Far East than at home or in America. ”

“ Yet "there is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor beneath which axe shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness." ”

“ Fortunately in 1841 new administrations came into power in both England and the United States. Neither the English Tories nor the American Whigs felt bound to maintain all the contentions of their predecessors, and both desired to come to an agreement. The responsibility on the American side fell upon Daniel Webster, the new Secretary of State. With less foreign experience than John Quincy Adams, he was more a man of the world and a man among men. ”

“ In 1898, however, it seemed to be universally taken for granted by people and administration, by professional soldier as well as by public sentiment, that the army must invade Cuba without regard to its fitness for such active service. The responsibility for this decision must rest upon the nation. The experience of centuries had proved conspicuously that climate was the strongest defense of the Caribbean islands against invasion, and it was in large measure the very sacrifice of so many American soldiers that induced the study of tropical diseases. ”

“ The alarm which had previously been created on the American coast by the shrouded approach of Cervera naturally suggested that the Americans themselves might win one of those psychological victories now recognized as such an important factor in modern warfare. The chief purpose of future operations was to convince the Spanish people that they were defeated, and nothing would more conduce to this result than to bring war to their doors. This was, moreover, an operation particularly suited to the conditions under which the United States was waging war, for publicity was here a helping factor. ”

“ Venezuela, that hive of revolution, sent forth Bolivar to found the new republics of Colombia and Bolivia. Mexico freed herself, and Brazil separated herself from Portugal. By 1822 European rule had been practically swept off the American mainland, from Cape Horn to the borders of Canada, and, except for the empire of Dom Pedro in Brazil, the newly born nations had adopted the republican form of government which the European monarchs despised. The spirit of unrest leaped eastward across the Atlantic. ”

“ Always the American people have stood, from the first days of their migration to America, for the right of the people of a territory to determine their own development. First they have insisted that their own right to work out their political destiny be acknowledged and made safe. For this they fought the Revolution. It has followed that they have in foreign affairs tried to keep their hands free from entanglements with other countries and have refrained from interference with foreign politics. ”

“ The insecurity of the American position was revealed during the Civil War. When the United States divided within, the strength of the nation vanished. The hitherto suppressed desires of European nations at once manifested themselves. Spain, never satisfied that her American empire was really lost, at once leaped to take advantage of the change. On a trumped up invitation of some of the inhabitants of Santo Domingo, she invaded the formerly Spanish portion of the island and she began war with Peru in the hope of acquiring at least some of the Pacific islands belonging to that state. ”