and statesman-Daniel Webster in the United States Senate of this western coast said: "What do we want with this worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting and not a harbor on it? Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch nearer to Boston than it now is." General William T. Sherman, then Captain Sherman, soon after the Mexican war of which he was a veteran, was commissioned by General Taylor, then President, to inspect the newly acquired territory. In about a year Captain Sherman returned to Washington to make his report. "Well, Captain, of what value are our new possessions? Are they worth in blood and wealth what they have cost this country? I wish your private opinion." "You know, General," said the Captain, "they cost us one hundred millions of dollars and ten thousand men." "Yes, but we have New Mexico and California." "Well, General, I have been all over that country, made careful investigation, but between you and me we will have to go to war again. Yes, we must have another war." "What for?" asked the General in surprise. "Why to make the Mexicans take their damned country back." Since that conference at the White House what marvelous changes! The newly acquired territory was either bordering on, or within, what was then known as "The Great American Desert." As a desert region, there was over it then a dismal cloud and around it a rayless border; in fertility now, it teems with millions, millions realizing golden visions and romantic dreams;—a civilization whose sky is sunshine and whose every prospect is tinged with the golden hues of hope. Through the portals to this civilization have come the curious eyes of all nations, there having arisen the stranger-than-fiction city, whose Tower of Jewels twinkles in the azure blue, a City of Science-and-Art-Craft unequaled, unequaled since the stars first bejeweled the firmament of heaven. Heedless of the admonition of the Founders of this republic, the United States has become a world-power. When in 1898 the American soldiers for the first time returned from invading a foreign over-seas country, and landed in San Francisco, there were more than four hundred thousand citizens on either side of Market Street to do them honor. No greater triumph was ever accorded the victorious army of Cæsar, returning to Rome from a foreign land, than was accorded the American army on its triumphal home-ward tour from San Francisco to New York. The United States is not only a northern state but one of its provinces is of the Central American states. After more than forty failures the United States has constructed the Panama Canal, of its kind the world's greatest enterprise. It was constructed at an expense of four hundred millions of dollars and is of commercial value to every American republic. The United States has the Philippine possessions in the Orient, the Hawaiian Islands in the central part of the Pacific Ocean, Alaska bordering on the Arctic Ocean, possessions in the West Indies and a strip of land on either side of the canal. The Panama Canal is the world's highway between the seas. It lies within the republic of Panama. On the north are Costa Rica and Nicaragua; on the south and east Colombia and Venezuela. Jamaica, England's island province, menacingly guards the eastern terminus of the canal. Having such vast territory disconnected on this continent, with territorial possessions across the sea, what would the United States be? Friendless in America? Without American support in defense of the Panama Canal? Without American allies in case of an invasion of the armed millions from the Orient or the Occident? England is mistress of the seas. Japan, with her great prestige as a military and maritime power, lies to the west, having an alliance offensive and defensive with England. General Bernhardi in his "Germany and the Next War" predicts, should Germany be crushed in the present world contest, that England will undertake to control the canal. In the air, on the earth and under the sea, there rages the fiercest contest in all history for supremacy; not the supremacy of Europe, not the supremacy of America, nor both, but the supremacy of the human race. In view of the present position of the United States as a world power menacing such European supremacy, in view of the ownership of the canal by the United States, in view of the world's richest possessions inviting the conquest of the western hemisphere,—in view of all the condi tions existing, there are menaces to the perpetuity of peace in this republic. Does Mexico forget that the United States has been her friend? Does Mexico forget that the United States was first among the nations of the world to recognize her independence; that the United States refused to accept Yucatan as one of her provinces when in 1848 she knocked at the door asking for admission into the Union? Does Mexico forget the famous letter of 1865 on Mexican affairs by Secretary of State Seward, sent through our Minister Dayton, to Napoleon? Does Mexico forget that in 1866 General Sheridan marshalled the American army of fifty thousand soldiers in Texas to drive the French army from Mexican territory? Does Mexico forget the policy of President Diaz who said he had no need of a standing army other than to preserve internal peace, no need of a navy, because the navy of the United States under the Monroe Doctrine was bound to protect Mexico from foreign invasion? Does Mexico forget that the American navy has been her defense these many years, as it has been our defense? Does Mexico forget that within the past four years of internecine strife, without expense to Mexico, she had the benefit of the American navy in the harbor of Vera Cruz; that in all these years, under a protest by the European nations of her attitude, the United States has not invaded Mexican territory? In the use of navies, and the "far-flungbattle-line" between the United States and Mexico, "Judge of the nations, spare us yet, Would Mexico court the friendship of Japan? Of England? Of Germany? Of France? Of Russia? Or would she retain the friendship of the United States whom Gamboa calls "Mexico's nearest friend"? In case of a European world-supremacy, if not America's nearest and most valued friend, what would Mexico be? A Poland? Or a Belgium? Or would she wish to be a Korea? A Tripoli? A Morocco? Or an Algiers? In the changes certain to occur on the map of the world what position would Mexico assume in the galaxy of nations? Would she wish to come to pass the prophecy not long ago made by General Huerta that "England, Japan and Mexico will go together, and after that there will be an end to the United States"? Whatever may be in the minds of the statesmen of England and Japan I know not, but I cannot think the Huerta sentiment prevails in Mexico. I would rather think that in Mexico there exists that other sentiment which a few weeks ago stirred the Pan-American Conference to a burst of patriotic frenzy, the sentiment of Doctor Santiago P. Triana of Colombia who announced the new Pan-American shiboleth to be "America for Americans." The two republics having made tremendous sacrifices of human life for freedom and justice, and now held together by the "golden yoke of amity," humanity cries out that, in the present and in the future, there can be no sacrifices too great that should not be made by both Americans and Mexicans to perpetuate the Mexican republic as "One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One nation evermore." |