The suddenness--so far, at least, as the general public is
concerned--with which the long-existing troubles in Hawaii have come to
a head, and the character of the advances reported to be addressed to
the United States by the revolutionary government, formally recognized
as _de facto_ by our representative on the spot, add another to the
many significant instances furnished by history, that, as men in the
midst of life are in death, so nations in the midst of peace find
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
is the same. Though thus somewhat gorged with food not wholly to its
taste, our political digestion has contrived so far to master the
incongruous mass of materials it has been unable to reject; and if
assimilation has been at times imperfect, our political constitution
and spirit remain English in essential features. Imbued with like
ideals of liberty, of law, of right, certainly not less progressive
than our kin beyond sea, we are, in the safeguards deliberately placed
around our fundamental law, even more conservative than they. That
which we received of the true spirit of freedom we have kept--liberty
and law--not the one or the other, but both. In that spirit we not
only have occupied our original inheritance, but also, step by step,
as Rome incorporated the other nations of the peninsula, we have added
to it, spreading and perpetuating everywhere the same foundation
principles of free and good government which, to her honor be it said,
Great Britain also has maintained throughout her course. And now,
arrested on the south by the rights of a race wholly alien to us, and
on the north by a body of states of like traditions to our own, whose
freedom to choose their own affiliations we respect, we have come to
the sea. In our infancy we bordered upon the Atlantic only; our youth
carried our boundary to the Gulf of Mexico; to-day maturity sees us
upon the Pacific. Have we no right or no call to progress farther in
any direction? Are there for us beyond the sea horizon none of those
essential interests, of those evident dangers, which impose a policy
and confer rights?
This is the question that long has been looming upon the brow of a
future now rapidly passing into the present. Of it the Hawaiian
incident is a part--intrinsically, perhaps, a small part--but in its
relations to the whole so vital that, as has been said before, a wrong
decision does not stand by itself, but involves, not only in principle
but in fact, recession along the whole line. In our natural, necessary,
irrepressible expansion, we are come here into contact with the
progress of another great people, the law of whose being has impressed
upon it a principle of growth which has wrought mightily in the past,
and in the present is visible by recurring manifestations. Of this
working, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Aden, India, in geographical
succession though not in strict order of time, show a completed chain;
forged link by link, by open force or politic bargain, but always
resulting from the steady pressure of a national instinct, so powerful
and so accurate that statesmen of every school, willing or unwilling,
have found themselves carried along by a tendency which no
individuality can resist or greatly modify. Both unsubstantial rumor
and incautious personal utterance have suggested an impatient desire
in Mr. Gladstone to be rid of the occupation of Egypt; but scarcely
has his long exclusion from office ended when the irony of events
signalizes his return thereto by an increase in the force of
occupation. Further, it may be noted profitably of the chain just
cited, that the two extremities were first possessed--first India,
then Gibraltar, far later Malta, Aden, Cyprus, Egypt--and that, with
scarce an exception, each step has been taken despite the jealous
vexation of a rival. Spain has never ceased angrily to bewail
Gibraltar. "I had rather see the English on the heights of
Montmartre," said the first Napoleon, "than in Malta." The feelings of
France about Egypt are matter of common knowledge, not even
dissembled; and, for our warning be it added, her annoyance is
increased by the bitter sense of opportunity rejected.
It is needless here to do more than refer to that other chain of
maritime possessions--Halifax, Bermuda, Santa Lucia, Jamaica--which
strengthen the British hold upon the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the
Isthmus of Panama. In the Pacific the position is for them much less
satisfactory--nowhere, perhaps, is it less so, and from obvious natural
causes. The commercial development of the eastern Pacific has been far
later, and still is less complete, than that of its western shores. The
latter when first opened to European adventure were already the seat of
ancient economies in China and Japan, furnishing abundance of curious
and luxurious products to tempt the trader by good hopes of profit. The
western coast of America, for the most part peopled by savages, offered
little save the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru, and these were
monopolized jealously by the Spaniards--not a commercial nation--during
their long ascendency. Being so very far from England and affording so
little material for trade, Pacific America did not draw the enterprise
of a country the chief and honorable inducement of whose seamen was the
hope of gain, in pursuit of which they settled and annexed point after
point in the regions where they penetrated, and upon the routes leading
thither. The western coasts of North America, being reached only by the
long and perilous voyage around Cape Horn, or by a more toilsome and
dangerous passage across the continent, remained among the last of the
temperate productive seaboards of the earth to be possessed by white
men. The United States were already a nation, in fact as well as in
form, when Vancouver was exploring Puget Sound and passed first through
the channel separating the mainland of British America from the island
which now bears his name. Thus it has happened that, from the late
development of British Columbia in the northeastern Pacific, and of
Australia and New Zealand in the southwestern, Great Britain is found
again holding the two extremities of a line, between which she must
inevitably desire the intermediate links; nor is there any good reason
why she should not have them, except the superior, more urgent, more
vital necessities of another people--our own. Of these links the
Hawaiian group possesses unique importance--not from its intrinsic
commercial value, but from its favorable position for maritime and
military control.
The military or strategic value of a naval position depends upon its
situation, upon its strength, and upon its resources. Of the three, the
first is of most consequence, because it results from the nature of
things; whereas the two latter, when deficient, can be supplied
artificially, in whole or in part. Fortifications remedy the weaknesses
of a position, foresight accumulates beforehand the resources which
nature does not yield on the spot; but it is not within the power of
man to change the geographical situation of a point which lies outside
the limit of strategic effect. It is instructive, and yet apparent to
the most superficial reading, to notice how the first Napoleon, in
commenting upon a region likely to be the scene of war, begins by
considering the most conspicuous natural features, and then enumerates
the commanding positions, their distances from each other, the relative
directions, or, as the sea phrase is, their "bearings," and the
particular facilities each offers for operations of war. This furnishes
the ground plan, the skeleton, detached from confusing secondary
considerations, and from which a clear estimate of the decisive points
can be made. The number of such points varies greatly, according to the
character of the region. In a mountainous, broken country they may be
very many; whereas in a plain devoid of natural obstacles there may be
few, or none save those created by man. If few, the value of each is
necessarily greater than if many; and if there be but one, its
importance is not only unique, but extreme,--measured only by the size
of the field over which its unshared influence extends.
The sea, until it approaches the land, realizes the ideal of a vast
plain unbroken by obstacles. On the sea, says an eminent French
tactician, there is no field of battle, meaning that there is none of
the natural conditions which determine, and often fetter, the movements
of the general. But upon a plain, however flat and monotonous, causes,
possibly slight, determine the concentration of population into towns
and villages, and the necessary communications between the centres
create roads. Where the latter converge, or cross, tenure confers
command, depending for importance upon the number of routes thus
meeting, and upon their individual value. It is just so at sea. While
in itself the ocean opposes no obstacle to a vessel taking any one of
the numerous routes that can be traced upon the surface of the globe
between two points, conditions of distance or convenience, of traffic
or of wind, do prescribe certain usual courses. Where these pass near
an ocean position, still more where they use it, it has an influence
over them, and where several routes cross near by that influence
becomes very great,--is commanding.
Let us now apply these considerations to the Hawaiian group. To any one
viewing a map that shows the full extent of the Pacific Ocean, with its
shores on either side, two striking circumstances will be apparent
immediately. He will see at a glance that the Sandwich Islands stand by
themselves, in a state of comparative isolation, amid a vast expanse of
sea; and, again, that they form the centre of a large circle whose
radius is approximately--and very closely--the distance from Honolulu
to San Francisco. The circumference of this circle, if the trouble is
taken to describe it with compass upon the map, will be seen, on the
west and south, to pass through the outer fringe of the system of
archipelagoes which, from Australia and New Zealand, extend to the
northeast toward the American continent. Within the circle a few
scattered islets, bare and unimportant, seem only to emphasize the
failure of nature to bridge the interval separating Hawaii from her
peers of the Southern Pacific. Of these, however, it may be noted that
some, like Fanning and Christmas Islands, have within a few years been
taken into British possession. The distance from San Francisco to
Honolulu, twenty-one hundred miles--easy steaming distance--is
substantially the same as that from Honolulu to the Gilbert, Marshall,
Samoan, Society, and Marquesas groups, all under European control,
except Samoa, in which we have a part influence.
To have a central position such as this, and to be alone, having no
rival and admitting no alternative throughout an extensive tract, are
conditions that at once fix the attention of the strategist,--it may be
added, of the statesmen of commerce likewise. But to this striking
combination are to be added the remarkable relations, borne by these
singularly placed islands, to the greater commercial routes traversing
this vast expanse known to us as the Pacific,--not only, however, to
those now actually in use, important as they are, but also to those
that must be called into being necessarily by that future to which the
Hawaiian incident compels our too unwilling attention. Circumstances,
as already remarked, create centres, between which communication
necessarily follows; and in the vista of the future all discern,
however dimly, a new and great centre that must largely modify existing
sea routes, as well as bring new ones into existence. Whether the canal
of the Central American isthmus be eventually at Panama or at Nicaragua
matters little to the question now in hand, although, in common with
most Americans who have thought upon the subject, I believe it surely
will be at the latter point. Whichever it be, the convergence there of
so many ships from the Atlantic and the Pacific will constitute a
centre of commerce, interoceanic, and inferior to few, if to any, in
the world; one whose approaches will be watched jealously, and whose
relations to the other centres of the Pacific by the lines joining it
to them must be examined carefully. Such study of the commercial routes
and of their relations to the Hawaiian Islands, taken together with the
other strategic considerations previously set forth, completes the
synopsis of facts which determine the value of the group for conferring
either commercial or naval control.
Referring again to the map, it will be seen that while the shortest
routes from the Isthmus to Australia and New Zealand, as well as those
to South America, go well clear of any probable connection with or
interference from Hawaii, those directed toward China and Japan pass
either through the group or in close proximity to it. Vessels from
Central America bound to the ports of North America come, of course,
within the influence of our own coast. These circumstances, and the
existing recognized distribution of political power in the Pacific,
point naturally to an international acquiescence in certain defined
spheres of influence, for our own country and for others, such as has
been reached already between Great Britain, Germany, and Holland in the
Southwestern Pacific, to avoid conflict there between their respective
claims. Though artificial in form, such a recognition, in the case here
suggested, would depend upon perfectly natural as well as indisputable
conditions. The United States is by far the greatest, in numbers,
interests, and power, of the communities bordering upon the eastern
shores of the North Pacific; and the relations of the Hawaiian Islands
to her naturally would be, and actually are, more numerous and more
important than they can be to any other state. This is true, although,
unfortunately for the equally natural wishes of Great Britain and her
colonies, the direct routes from British Columbia to Eastern Australia
and New Zealand, which depend upon no building of a future canal, pass
as near the islands as those already mentioned. Such a fact, that this
additional great highway runs close to the group, both augments and
emphasizes their strategic importance; but it does not affect the
statement just made, that the interest of the United States in them
surpasses that of Great Britain, and dependent upon a natural cause,
nearness, which has been admitted always as a reasonable ground for
national self-assertion. It is unfortunate, doubtless, for the wishes
of British Columbia, and for the communications, commercial and
military, depending upon the Canadian Pacific Railway, that the United
States lies between them and the South Pacific, and is the state
nearest to Hawaii; but, the fact being so, the interests of our
sixty-five million people, in a position so vital to our part in the
Pacific, must be allowed to outweigh those of the six millions of
Canada.
From the foregoing considerations may be inferred the importance of the
Hawaiian Islands as a position powerfully influencing the commercial
and military control of the Pacific, and especially of the Northern
Pacific, in which the United States, geographically, has the strongest
right to assert herself. These are the main advantages, which can be
termed positive: those, namely, which directly advance commercial
security and naval control. To the negative advantages of possession,
by removing conditions which, if the islands were in the hands of any
other power, would constitute to us disadvantages and threats, allusion
only will be made. The serious menace to our Pacific coast and our
Pacific trade, if so important a position were held by a possible
enemy, has been mentioned frequently in the press, and dwelt upon in
the diplomatic papers which from time to time are given to the public.
It may be assumed that it is generally acknowledged. Upon one
particular, however, too much stress cannot be laid, one to which naval
officers cannot but be more sensitive than the general public, and that
is the immense disadvantage to us of any maritime enemy having a
coaling-station well within twenty-five hundred miles, as this is, of
every point of our coast-line from Puget Sound to Mexico. Were there
many others available, we might find it difficult to exclude from all.
There is, however, but the one. Shut out from the Sandwich Islands as a
coal base, an enemy is thrown back for supplies of fuel to distances of
thirty-five hundred or four thousand miles,--or between seven thousand
and eight thousand, going and coming,--an impediment to sustained
maritime operations well-nigh prohibitive. The coal-mines of British
Columbia constitute, of course, a qualification to this statement; but
upon them, if need arose, we might hope at least to impose some
trammels by action from the land side. It is rarely that so important a
factor in the attack or defence of a coast-line--of a sea frontier--is
concentrated in a single position; and the circumstance renders doubly
imperative upon us to secure it, if we righteously can.
It is to be hoped, also, that the opportunity thus thrust upon us may
not be viewed narrowly, as though it concerned but one section of our
country or one portion of its external trade or influence. This is no
mere question of a particular act, for which, possibly, just occasion
may not have offered yet; but of a principle, a policy, fruitful of
many future acts, to enter upon which, in the fulness of our national
progress, the time now has arrived. The principle being accepted, to be
conditioned only by a just and candid regard for the rights and
reasonable susceptibilities of other nations,--none of which is
contravened by the step here immediately under discussion,--the
annexation, even, of Hawaii would be no mere sporadic effort,
irrational because disconnected from an adequate motive, but a
first-fruit and a token that the nation in its evolution has aroused
itself to the necessity of carrying its life--that has been the
happiness of those under its influence--beyond the borders which
heretofore have sufficed for its activities. That the vaunted blessings
of our economy are not to be forced upon the unwilling may be conceded;
but the concession does not deny the right nor the wisdom of gathering
in those who wish to come. Comparative religion teaches that creeds
which reject missionary enterprise are foredoomed to decay. May it not
be so with nations? Certainly the glorious record of England is
consequent mainly upon the spirit, and traceable to the time, when she
launched out into the deep--without formulated policy, it is true, or
foreseeing the future to which her star was leading, but obeying the
instinct which in the infancy of nations anticipates the more reasoned
impulses of experience. Let us, too, learn from her experience. Not all
at once did England become the great sea power which she is, but step
by step, as opportunity offered, she has moved on to the world-wide
pre-eminence now held by English speech, and by institutions sprung
from English germs. How much poorer would the world have been, had
Englishmen heeded the cautious hesitancy that now bids us reject every
advance beyond our shore-lines! And can any one doubt that a cordial,
if unformulated, understanding between the two chief states of English
tradition, to spread freely, without mutual jealousy and in mutual
support, would increase greatly the world's sum of happiness?
But if a plea of the world's welfare seem suspiciously like a cloak for
national self-interest, let the latter be accepted frankly as the
adequate motive which it assuredly is. Let us not shrink from pitting a
broad self-interest against the narrow self-interest to which some
would restrict us. The demands of our three great seaboards, the
Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Pacific,--each for itself, and all for the
strength that comes from drawing closer the ties between them,--are
calling for the extension, through the Isthmian Canal, of that broad
sea common along which, and along which alone, in all the ages
prosperity has moved. Land carriage, always restricted and therefore
always slow, toils enviously but hopelessly behind, vainly seeking to
replace and supplant the royal highway of nature's own making.
Corporate interests, vigorous in that power of concentration which is
the strength of armies and of minorities, may here withstand for a
while the ill-organized strivings of the multitude, only dimly
conscious of its wants; yet the latter, however temporarily opposed and
baffled, is sure at last, like the blind forces of nature, to overwhelm
all that stand in the way of its necessary progress. So the Isthmian
Canal is an inevitable part in the future of the United States; yet one
that cannot be separated from other necessary incidents of a policy
dependent upon it, whose details cannot be foreseen exactly. But
because the precise steps that hereafter may be opportune or necessary
cannot yet be foretold certainly, is not a reason the less, but a
reason the more, for establishing a principle of action which may serve
to guide as opportunities arise. Let us start from the fundamental
truth, warranted by history, that the control of the seas, and
especially along the great lines drawn by national interest or national
commerce, is the chief among the merely material elements in the power
and prosperity of nations. It is so because the sea is the world's
great medium of circulation. From this necessarily follows the
principle that, as subsidiary to such control, it is imperative to take
possession, when it can be done righteously, of such maritime positions
as contribute to secure command. If this principle be adopted, there
will be no hesitation about taking the positions--and they are
many--upon the approaches to the Isthmus, whose interests incline them
to seek us. It has its application also to the present case of Hawaii.
There is, however, one caution to be given from the military point of
view, beyond the need of which the world has not yet passed. Military
positions, fortified posts, by land or by sea, however strong or
admirably situated, do not confer control by themselves alone. People
often say that such an island or harbor will give control of such a
body of water. It is an utter, deplorable, ruinous mistake. The phrase
indeed may be used by some only loosely, without forgetting other
implied conditions of adequate protection and adequate navies; but the
confidence of our own nation in its native strength, and its
indifference to the defence of its ports and the sufficiency of its
fleet, give reason to fear that the full consequences of a forward step
may not be weighed soberly. Napoleon, who knew better, once talked this
way. "The islands of San Pietro, Corfu, and Malta," he wrote, "will
make us masters of the whole Mediterranean." Vain boast! Within one
year Corfu, in two years Malta, were rent away from the state that
could not support them by its ships. Nay, more: had Bonaparte not taken
the latter stronghold out of the hands of its degenerate but innocuous
government, that citadel of the Mediterranean would perhaps--would
probably--never have passed into those of his chief enemy. There is
here also a lesson for us.
It is by no means logical to leap, from this recognition of the
necessity of adequate naval force to secure outlying dependencies, to
the conclusion that the United States would need for that object a navy
equal to the largest now existing. A nation as far removed as is our
own from the bases of foreign naval strength may reasonably reckon upon
the qualification that distance--not to speak of the complex European
interests close at hand--impresses upon the exertion of naval strength
by European powers. The mistake is when our remoteness, unsupported by
carefully calculated force, is regarded as an armor of proof, under
cover of which any amount of swagger may be indulged safely. An
estimate of what is an adequate naval force for our country may
properly take into account the happy interval which separates both our
present territory and our future aspirations from the centres of
interest really vital to European states. If to these safeguards be
added, on our part, a sober recognition of what our reasonable sphere
of influence is, and a candid justice in dealing with foreign interests
within that sphere, there will be little disposition to question our
preponderance therein.
Among all foreign states, it is especially to be hoped that each
passing year may render more cordial the relations between ourselves
and the great nation from whose loins we sprang. The radical identity
of spirit which underlies our superficial differences of polity surely
will draw us closer together, if we do not set our faces wilfully
against a tendency which would give our race the predominance over the
seas of the world. To force such a consummation is impossible, and if
possible would not be wise; but surely it would be a lofty aim, fraught
with immeasurable benefits, to desire it, and to raise no needless
impediments by advocating perfectly proper acts, demanded by our
evident interests, in offensive or arrogant terms.