_June, 1898._
For more than four hundred years the mind of man has been possessed
with a great idea, which, although by its wide diffusion and prophetic
nature resembling one of those fundamental instincts, whose very
existence points to a necessary fulfilment, first quickened into life
in the thought of Christopher Columbus. To him the vision, dimly seen
through the scanty and inaccurate knowledge of his age, imaged a close
and facile communication, by means of the sea, that great bond of
nations, between two ancient and diverse civilizations, which centred,
the one around the Mediterranean, the birthplace of European commerce,
refinement, and culture, the other upon the shores of that distant
Eastern Ocean which lapped the dominions of the Great Khan, and held
upon its breast the rich island of Zipangu. Hitherto an envious waste
of land, entailing years of toilsome and hazardous journey, had barred
them asunder. A rare traveller now and again might penetrate from one
to the other, but it was impossible to maintain by land the constant
exchange of influence and benefit which, though on a contracted scale,
had constituted the advantage and promoted the development of the
Mediterranean peoples. The microcosm of the land-girt sea typified
then that future greater family of nations, which one by one have been
bound since into a common tie of interest by the broad enfolding
ocean, that severs only to knit them more closely together. So with a
seer's eye, albeit as in a glass darkly; saw Columbus, and was
persuaded, and embraced the assurance. As the bold adventurer, walking
by faith and not by sight, launched his tiny squadron upon its voyage,
making the first step in the great progress which was to be, and still
is not completed, he little dreamed that the mere incident of
stumbling upon an unknown region that lay across his route should be
with posterity his chief title to fame, obscuring the true glory of
his grand conception, as well as delaying its fulfilment to a far
distant future.
[1] The Map of the Gulf and Caribbean, p. 31, will serve
for geographical references of this article.
The story of his actual achievement is sufficiently known to all
readers, and need not be repeated here. Amid the many disappointments
and humiliations which succeeded the brief triumphant blaze of his
first return, and clouded the latter years of his life, Columbus was
spared the pang of realizing that the problem was insoluble for the
time. Like many a prophet before him, he knew not what, nor what
manner of time, the spirit that was in him foretold, and died the
happier for his ignorance. The certainty that a wilderness, peopled by
savages and semi-barbarians, had been added to the known world, would
have been a poor awakening from the golden dreams of beneficent glory
as well as of profit which so long had beckoned him on. That the
western land he had discovered interposed a barrier to the further
progress of ships towards his longed-for goal, as inexorable as the
mountain ranges and vast steppes of Asia, was mercifully concealed
from his eyes; and the elusive "secret of the strait" through which he
to the last hoped to pass, though tantalizing in its constant evasion,
kept in tension the springs of hope and moral energy which might have
succumbed under the knowledge of the truth.
It fell to the great discoverer, in his last voyage, to approach the
continent, and to examine its shores along the region where the true
secret of the strait lay hidden,--where, if ever, it shall pass from a
dream to a reality, by the hand of man. In the autumn of 1502, after
many trials and misadventures, Columbus, having skirted the south side
of Cuba, reached the north coast of Honduras. There was little reason,
except in his own unaccountable conviction, for continuing thence in
one direction rather than in the other; but by some process of thought
he had convinced himself that the sought-for strait lay to the south
rather than to the north. He therefore turned to the eastward, though
the wind was contrary, and, after a hard buffet against it, doubled
Cape Gracias á Dios, which still retains its expressive name,
significant of his relief at finding that the trend of the beach at
last permitted him to follow his desired course with a fair wind.
During the next two months he searched the entire coast-line as far as
Porto Bello, discovering and examining several openings in the land
which since have been of historical importance, among others the mouth
of the San Juan River and the Chiriqui Lagoon, one of whose principal
divisions still recalls his visit in its name, Almirante Bay, the Bay
of the Admiral. A little beyond, to the eastward of Porto Bello, he
came to a point already known to the Spaniards, having been reached
from Trinidad. The explorer thus acquired the certainty that, from the
latter island to Yucatan, there was no break in the obdurate shore
which barred his access to Asia.
Every possible site for an interoceanic canal lies within the strip of
land thus visited by Columbus shortly before his death in 1504. How
narrow the insurmountable obstacle, and how tantalizing, in the
apparent facilities for piercing it extended by the formation of the
land, were not known until ten years later, when Balboa, led on by the
reports of the natives, reached the eminence whence he, first among
Europeans, saw the South Sea,--a name long and vaguely applied to the
Pacific, because of the direction in which it lay from its discoverer.
During these early years the history of the region we now know as
Central America was one of constant strife among the various Spanish
leaders, encouraged rather than stifled by the jealous home
government; but it was also one of unbroken and venturesome
exploration, a healthier manifestation of the same restless and daring
energy that provoked their internal collisions. In January, 1522, one
Gil Gonzalez started from Panama northward on the Pacific side, with a
few frail barks, and in March discovered Lake Nicaragua, which has its
name from the cacique, Nicaragua, or Nicarao, whose town stood upon
its shores. Five years later, another adventurer took his vessel to
pieces on the coast, transported it thus to the lake, and made the
circuit of the latter; discovering its outlet, the San Juan, just a
quarter of a century after Columbus had visited the mouth of the
river.
The conquest of Peru, and the gradual extension of Spanish domination
and settlements in Central America and along the shores of the
Pacific, soon bestowed upon the Isthmus an importance, vividly
suggestive of its rise into political prominence consequent upon the
acquisition of California by the United States, and upon the spread of
the latter along the Pacific coast. The length and severity of the
voyage round Cape Horn, then as now, impelled men to desire some
shorter and less arduous route; and, inconvenient as the land
transport with its repeated lading and unlading was, it presented
before the days of steam the better alternative, as to some extent it
still does. So the Isthmus and its adjoining regions became a great
centre of commerce, a point where many highways converged and whence
they parted; where the East and the West met in intercourse, sometimes
friendly, more often hostile. Thus was realized partially, though most
incompletely, the vision of Columbus; and thus, after many
fluctuations, and despite the immense expansion of these latter days,
partial and incomplete his great conception yet remains. The secret of
the strait is still the problem and the reproach of mankind.
By whatever causes produced, where such a centre of commerce exists,
there always will be found a point of general interest to mankind,--to
all, at least, of those peoples who, whether directly commercial or
not, share in the wide-spreading benefits and inconveniences arising
from the fluctuations of trade. But enterprising commercial countries
are not content to be mere passive recipients of these diverse
influences. By the very characteristics which make them what they are,
they are led perforce to desire, and to aim at, control of these
decisive regions; for their tenure, like the key of a military
position, exerts a vital effect upon the course of trade, and so upon
the struggle, not only for bare existence, but for that increase of
wealth, of prosperity, and of general consideration, which affect both
the happiness and the dignity of nations. Consequently, in every age,
according to its particular temperament and circumstances, there will
be found manifested this desire for control; sometimes latent in an
attitude of simple watchfulness; sometimes starting into vivid action
under the impulse of national jealousies, and issuing in diplomatic
rivalries or hostile encounter.
Such, accordingly, has been the history of the Central American
Isthmus since the time when it became recognized as the natural
centre, towards which, if not thwarted by adverse influences, the
current of intercourse between East and West inevitably must tend.
Here the direction of least resistance was indicated clearly by
nature; and a concurrence of circumstances, partly inherent in the
general character of the region, partly adventitious or accidental,
contributed at an early date, and until very recently, to emphasize
and enlarge the importance consequent upon the geographical situation
and physical conformation of this narrow barrier between two great
seas. For centuries the West India Islands, circling the Caribbean,
and guarding the exterior approaches to the Isthmus, continued to be
the greatest single source of tropical products which had become
increasingly necessary to the civilized nations of Europe. In them,
and in that portion of the continent which extended on either side of
the Isthmus, known under the vague appellation of the Spanish Main,
Great Britain, during her desperate strife with the first Napoleon,--a
strife for very existence,--found the chief support of the commercial
strength and credit that alone carried her to the triumphant end. The
Isthmus and the Caribbean were vital elements in determining the issue
of that stern conflict. For centuries, also, the treasures of Mexico
and Peru, upon which depended the vigorous action of the great though
decadent military kingdom of Spain, flowed towards and accumulated
around the Isthmus, where they were reinforced by the tribute of the
Philippine Islands, and whence they took their way in the lumbering
galleons for the ports of the Peninsula. Where factors of such
decisive influence in European politics were at stake, it was
inevitable that the rival nations, in peace as well as in open war,
should carry their ambitions to the scene; and the unceasing struggle
for the mastery would fluctuate with the control of the waters, which,
as in all maritime regions, must depend mainly upon naval
preponderance, but also in part upon possession of those determining
positions, of whose tenure Napoleon said that "war is a business of
positions." Among these the Isthmus was chief.
The wild enterprises and bloody cruelties of the early buccaneers were
therefore not merely a brutal exhibition of unpitying greed,
indicative of the scum of nations as yet barely emerging from
barbarism. They were this, doubtless, but they were something more. In
the march of events, these early marauders played the same part, in
relation to what was to succeed them, as the rude, unscrupulous,
lawless adventurers who now precede the ruthless march of civilized
man, who swarm over the border, occupy the outposts, and by their
excesses stain the fair fame of the race whose pioneers they are. But,
while thus libels upon and reproaches to the main body, they
nevertheless belong to it, share its essential character, and foretell
its inevitable course. Like driftwood swept forward on the crest of a
torrent, they betoken the approaching flood. So with the celebrated
freebooters of the Spanish Main. Of the same general type,--though
varying greatly in individual characteristics, in breadth of view, and
even in elevation of purpose,--their piratical careers not only
evidenced the local wealth of the scene of their exploits, but
attested the commercial and strategic importance of the position upon
which in fact that wealth depended. The carcass was there, and the
eagles as well as the vultures, the far-sighted as well as the mere
carrion birds of prey, were gathering round it. "The spoil of
Granada," said one of these mercenary chieftains, two centuries ago,
"I count as naught beside the knowledge of the great Lake Nicaragua,
and of the route between the Northern and Southern seas which depends
upon it."
As time passed, the struggle for the mastery inevitably resulted, by a
kind of natural selection, in the growing predominance of the people
of the British Islands, in whom commercial enterprise and political
instinct were blended so happily. The very lawlessness of the period
favored the extension of their power and influence; for it removed
from the free play of a nation's innate faculties the fetters which
are imposed by our present elaborate framework of precedents,
constitutions, and international law. Admirably adapted as these are
to the conservation and regular working of a political system, they
are, nevertheless, however wise, essentially artificial, and hence are
ill adapted to a transition state,--to a period in which order is
evolving out of chaos, where the result is durable exactly in
proportion to the freedom with which the natural forces are allowed to
act, and to reach their own equilibrium without extraneous
interference. Nor are such periods confined to the early days of mere
lawlessness. They recur whenever a crisis is reached in the career of
a nation; when old traditions, accepted maxims, or written
constitutions have been outgrown, in whole or in part; when the time
has come for a people to recognize that the limits imposed upon its
expansion, by the political wisdom of its forefathers, have ceased to
be applicable to its own changed conditions and those of the world.
The question then raised is not whether the constitution, as written,
shall be respected. It is how to reach modifications in the
constitution--and that betimes--so that the genius and awakened
intelligence of the people may be free to act, without violating that
respect for its fundamental law upon which national stability
ultimately depends. It is a curious feature of our current journalism
that it is clear-sighted and prompt to see the unfortunate trammels in
which certain of our religious bodies are held, by the cast-iron
tenets imposed upon them by a past generation, while at the same time
political tenets, similarly ancient, and imposed with a like ignorance
of a future which is our present, are invoked freely to forbid this
nation from extending its power and necessary enterprise into and
beyond the seas, to which on every side it now has attained.
During the critical centuries when Great Britain was passing through
that protracted phase of her history in which, from one of the least
among states, she became, through the power of the sea, the very
keystone and foundation upon which rested the commercial--for a time
even the political--fabric of Europe, the free action of her statesmen
and people was clogged by no uneasy sense that the national genius was
in conflict with artificial, self-imposed restrictions. She plunged
into the brawl of nations that followed the discovery of a new world,
of an unoccupied if not unclaimed inheritance, with a vigor and an
initiative which gained ever-accelerated momentum and power as the
years rolled by. Far and wide, in every sea, through every clime, her
seamen and her colonists spread; but while their political genius and
traditions enabled them, in regions adapted to the physical well-being
of the race, to found self-governing colonies which have developed
into one of the greatest, of free states, they did not find, and never
have found, that the possession of and rule over barbarous, or
semi-civilized, or inert tropical communities, were inconsistent with
the maintenance of political liberty in the mother country. The sturdy
vigor of the broad principle of freedom in the national life is
attested sufficiently by centuries of steady growth, that surest
evidence of robust vitality. But, while conforming in the long run to
the dictates of natural justice, no feeble scrupulosity impeded the
nation's advance to power, by which alone its mission and the law of
its being could be fulfilled. No artificial fetters were forged to
cramp the action of the state, nor was it drugged with political
narcotics to dwarf its growth.
In the region here immediately under consideration, Great Britain
entered the contest under conditions of serious disadvantage. The
glorious burst of maritime and colonial enterprise which marked the
reign of Elizabeth, as the new era dawned when the country recognized
the sphere of its true greatness, was confronted by the full power of
Spain, as yet outwardly unshaken, in actual tenure of the most
important positions in the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, and
claiming the right to exclude all others from that quarter of the
world. How brilliantly this claim was resisted is well known; yet, had
they been then in fashion, there might have been urged, to turn
England from the path which has made her what she is, the same
arguments that now are freely used to deter our own country from even
accepting such advantages as are ready to drop into her lap. If it be
true that Great Britain's maritime policy now is imposed to some
extent by the present necessities of the little group of islands which
form the nucleus of her strength, it is not true that any such
necessities first impelled her to claim her share of influence in the
world, her part in the great drama of nations. Not for such reasons
did she launch out upon the career which is perhaps the noblest yet
run by any people. It then could have been said to her, as it now is
said to us, "Why go beyond your own borders? Within them you have what
suffices for your needs and those of your population. There are
manifold abuses within to be corrected, manifold miseries to be
relieved. Let the outside world take care of itself. Defend yourself,
if attacked; being, however, always careful to postpone preparation to
the extreme limit of imprudence. 'Sphere of influence,' 'part in the
world,' 'national prestige,'--there are no such things; or if there
be, they are not worth fighting for." What England would have been,
had she so reasoned, is matter for speculation; that the world would
have been poorer may be confidently affirmed.
As the strength of Spain waned apace during the first half of the
seventeenth century, the external efforts of Great Britain also
slackened through the rise of internal troubles, which culminated in
the Great Rebellion, and absorbed for the time all the energies of the
people. The momentum acquired under Drake, Raleigh, and their
associates was lost, and an occasion, opportune through the exhaustion
of the great enemy, Spain, passed unimproved. But, though thus
temporarily checked, the national tendency remained, and quickly
resumed its sway when Cromwell's mighty hand had composed the
disorders of the Commonwealth. His clear-sighted statesmanship, as
well as the immediate necessities of his internal policy, dictated the
strenuous assertion by sea of Great Britain's claims, not only to
external respect, which he rigorously exacted, but also to her due
share in influencing the world outside her borders. The nation quickly
responded to his proud appeal, and received anew the impulse upon the
road to sea power which never since has been relaxed. To him were due
the measures--not, perhaps, economically the wisest, judged by modern
lights, but more than justified by the conditions of his times--which
drew into English hands the carrying trade of the world. The glories
of the British navy as an organized force date also from his short
rule; and it was he who, in 1655, laid a firm basis for the
development of the country's sea power in the Caribbean, by the
conquest of Jamaica, from a military standpoint the most decisive of
all single positions in that sea for the control of the Isthmus. It is
true that the successful attempt upon this island resulted from the
failure of the leaders to accomplish Cromwell's more immediate purpose
of reducing Santo Domingo,--that in so far the particular fortunate
issue was of the nature of an accident; but this fact serves only to
illustrate more emphatically that, when a general line of policy,
whether military or political, is correctly chosen upon sound
principles, incidental misfortunes or disappointments do not frustrate
the conception. The sagacious, far-seeing motive, which prompted
Cromwell's movement against the West Indian possessions of Spain, was
to contest the latter's claim to the monopoly of that wealthy region;
and he looked upon British extension in the islands as simply a
stepping-stone to control upon the adjacent continent. It is a
singular commentary upon the blindness of historians to the true
secret of Great Britain's rise among the nations, and of the eminent
position she so long has held, that writers so far removed from each
other in time and characteristics as Hume and the late J.R. Green
should detect in this far-reaching effort of the Protector, only the
dulled vision of "a conservative and unspeculative temper misled by
the strength of religious enthusiasm." "A statesman of wise political
genius," according to them, would have fastened his eyes rather upon
the growing power of France, "and discerned the beginning of that
great struggle for supremacy" which was fought out under Louis XIV.
But to do so would have been only to repeat, by anticipation, the
fatal error of that great monarch, which forever forfeited for France
the control of the seas, in which the surest prosperity of nations is
to be found; a mistake, also, far more ruinous to the island kingdom
than it was to her continental rival, bitter though the fruits thereof
have been to the latter. Hallam, with clearer insight, says: "When
Cromwell declared against Spain, and attacked her West Indian
possessions, there was little pretence, certainly, of justice, but not
by any means, as I conceive, the impolicy sometimes charged against
him. So auspicious was his star, that the very failure of that
expedition obtained a more advantageous possession for England than
all the triumphs of her former kings." Most true; but because his star
was despatched in the right direction to look for fortune,--by sea,
not by land.
The great aim of the Protector was checked by his untimely death,
which perhaps also definitely frustrated a fulfilment, in the actual
possession of the Isthmus, that in his strong hands might have been
feasible. His idea, however, remained prominent among the purposes of
the English people, as distinguished from their rulers; and in it, as
has been said before, is to be recognized the significance of the
exploits of the buccaneers, during the period of external debility
which characterized the reigns of the second Charles and James. With
William of Orange the government again placed itself at the head of
the national aspirations, as their natural leader; and the irregular
operations of the freebooters were merged in a settled national
policy. This, although for a moment diverted from its course by
temporary exigencies, was clearly formulated in the avowed objects
with which, in 1702, the wise Dutchman entered upon the War of the
Spanish Succession, the last great act of his political life. From the
Peace of Utrecht, which closed this war in 1713, the same design was
pursued with ever-increasing intensity, but with steady success, and
with it was gradually associated the idea of controlling also the
communication between the two oceans by way of the Isthmus. The best
known instance of this, because of its connection with the great name
of Nelson, was the effort made by him, in conjunction with a land
force, in 1780, when still a simple captain, to take possession of the
course of the San Juan River, and so of the interoceanic route through
Lake Nicaragua. The attempt ended disastrously, owing partly to the
climate, and partly to the strong series of works, numbering no less
than twelve, which the Spaniards, duly sensible of the importance of
the position, had constructed between the lake and the sea.
Difficulties such as were encountered by Nelson withstood Great
Britain's advance throughout this region. While neither blind nor
indifferent to the advantages conferred by actual possession, through
which she had profited elsewhere abundantly, the prior and
long-established occupation by Spain prevented her obtaining by such
means the control she ardently coveted, and in great measure really
exercised. The ascendency which made her, and still makes her, the
dominant factor in the political system of the West Indies and the
Isthmus resulted from her sea power, understood in its broadest sense.
She was the great trader, source of supplies, and medium of
intercourse between the various colonies themselves, and from them to
the outer world; while the capital and shipping employed in this
traffic were protected by a powerful navy, which, except on very rare
occasions, was fully competent to its work. Thus, while unable to
utilize and direct the resources of the countries, as she could have
done had they been her own property, she secured the fruitful use and
reaped the profit of such commercial transactions as were possible
under the inert and narrow rule of the Spaniards. The fact is
instructive, for the conditions to-day are substantially the same as
those of a century ago. Possession still vests in states and races
which have not attained yet the faculty of developing by themselves
the advantages conferred by nature; and control will abide still with
those whose ships, whose capital, whose traders support the industrial
system of the region, provided these are backed by a naval force
adequate to the demands of the military situation, rightly understood.
To any foreign state, control at the Central American Isthmus means
naval control, naval predominance, to which tenure of the land is at
best but a convenient incident.
Such, in brief, was the general tendency of events until the time when
the Spanish colonial empire began to break up, in 1808-10, and the
industrial system of the West India islands to succumb under the
approaching abolition of slavery. The concurrence of these two
decisive incidents, and the confusion which ensued in the political
and economical conditions, rapidly reduced the Isthmus and its
approaches to an insignificance from which the islands have not yet
recovered. The Isthmus is partially restored. Its importance, however,
depends upon causes more permanent, in the natural order of things,
than does that of the islands, which, under existing circumstances,
and under any circumstances that can be foreseen as yet, derive their
consequence chiefly from the effect which may be exerted from them
upon the tenure of the Isthmus. Hence the latter, after a period of
comparative obscurity, again emerged into notice as a vital political
factor, when the spread of the United States to the Pacific raised the
question of rapid and secure communication between our two great
seaboards. The Mexican War, the acquisition of California, the
discovery of gold, and the mad rush to the diggings which followed,
hastened, but by no means originated, the necessity for a settlement
of the intricate problems involved, in which the United States, from
its positions on the two seas, has the predominant interest. But,
though predominant, ours is not the sole interest; though less vital,
those of other foreign states are great and consequential; and,
accordingly, no settlement can be considered to constitute an
equilibrium, much less a finality, which does not effect our
preponderating influence, and at the same time insure the natural
rights of other peoples. So far as the logical distinction between
commercial and political will hold, it may be said that our interest
is both commercial and political, that of other states almost wholly
commercial.
The same national characteristics that of old made Great Britain the
chief contestant in all questions of maritime importance--with the
Dutch in the Mediterranean, with France in the East Indies, and with
Spain in the West--have made her also the exponent of foreign
opposition to our own asserted interest in the Isthmus. The policy
initiated by Cromwell, of systematic aggression in the Caribbean, and
of naval expansion and organization, has resulted in a combination of
naval force with naval positions unequalled, though not wholly
unrivalled, in that sea. And since, as the great sea carrier, Great
Britain has a preponderating natural interest in every new route open
to commerce, it is inevitable that she should scrutinize jealously
every proposition for the modification of existing arrangements,
conscious as she is of power to assert her claims, in case the
question should be submitted to the last appeal.
Nevertheless, although from the nature of the occupations which
constitute the welfare of her people, as well as from the
characteristics of her power, Great Britain seemingly has the larger
immediate stake in a prospective interoceanic canal, it has been
recognized tacitly on her part, as on our side openly asserted, that
the bearing of all questions of Isthmian transit upon our national
progress, safety, and honor, is more direct and more urgent than upon
hers. That she has felt so is plain from the manner in which she has
yielded before our tenacious remonstrances, in cases where the control
of the Isthmus was evidently the object of her action,--as in the
matters of the tenure of the Bay Islands and of the protectorate of
the Mosquito Coast. Our superior interest appears also from the nature
of the conditions which will follow from the construction of a canal.
So far as these changes are purely commercial, they will operate to
some extent to the disadvantage of Great Britain; because the result
will be to bring our Atlantic seaboard, the frontier of a rival
manufacturing and commercial state, much nearer to the Pacific than it
now is, and nearer to many points of that ocean than is England. To
make a rough general statement, easily grasped by a reader without the
map before him, Liverpool and New York are at present about
equidistant, by water, from all points on the west coast of America,
from Valparaiso to British Columbia. This is due to the fact that, to
go through the Straits of Magellan, vessels from both ports must pass
near Cape St. Roque, on the east coast of Brazil, which is nearly the
same distance from each. If the Nicaragua Canal existed, the line on
the Pacific equidistant from the two cities named would pass, roughly,
by Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Melbourne, or along the coasts
of Japan, China, and eastern Australia,--Liverpool, in this case,
using the Suez Canal, and New York that of Nicaragua. In short, the
line of equidistance would be shifted from the eastern shore of the
Pacific to its western coast, and all points of that ocean east of
Japan, China, and Australia--for example, the Hawaiian Islands--would
be nearer to New York than to Liverpool.
A recent British writer has calculated that about one-eighth of the
existing trade of the British Islands would be affected unfavorably by
the competition thus introduced. But this result, though a matter of
national concern, is political only in so far as commercial prosperity
or adversity modifies a nation's current history; that is, indirectly.
The principal questions affecting the integrity or security of the
British Empire are not involved seriously, for almost all of its
component parts lie within the regions whose mutual bond of union and
shortest line of approach are the Suez Canal. Nowhere has Great
Britain so little territory at stake, nowhere has she such scanty
possessions, as in the eastern Pacific, upon whose relations to the
world at large, and to ourselves in particular, the Isthmian Canal
will exert the greatest influence.
The chief political result of the Isthmian Canal will be to bring our
Pacific coast nearer, not only to our Atlantic seaboard, but also to
the great navies of Europe. Therefore, while the commercial gain,
through an uninterrupted water carriage, will be large, and is clearly
indicated by the acrimony with which a leading journal, apparently in
the interest of the great transcontinental roads, has lately
maintained the singular assertion that water transit is obsolete as
compared with land carriage, it is still true that the canal will
present an element of much weakness from the military point of view.
Except to those optimists whose robust faith in the regeneration of
human nature rejects war as an impossible contingency, this
consideration must occasion serious thought concerning the policy to
be adopted by the United States.
The subject, so far, has given rise only to diplomatic arrangement and
discussion, within which it is permissible to hope it always may be
confined; but the misunderstandings and protracted disputes that
followed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and the dissatisfaction with the
existing status that still obtains among many of our people, give
warning that our steps, as a nation, should be governed by some
settled notions, too universally held to be set aside by a mere change
of administration or caprice of popular will. Reasonable discussion,
which tends, either by its truth or by its evident errors, to clarify
and crystallize public opinion on so important a matter, never can be
amiss.
This question, from an abstract, speculative phase of the Monroe
Doctrine, took on the concrete and somewhat urgent form of security
for our trans-Isthmian routes against foreign interference towards the
middle of this century, when the attempt to settle it was made by the
oft-mentioned Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed April 19, 1850. Great
Britain was found then to be in possession, actual or constructive, of
certain continental positions, and of some outlying islands, which
would contribute not only to military control, but to that kind of
political interference which experience has shown to be the natural
consequence of the proximity of a strong power to a weak one. These
positions depended upon, indeed their tenure originated in, the
possession of Jamaica, thus justifying Cromwell's forecast. Of them,
the Belize, a strip of coast two hundred miles long, on the Bay of
Honduras, immediately south of Yucatan, was so far from the Isthmus
proper, and so little likely to affect the canal question, that the
American negotiator was satisfied to allow its tenure to pass
unquestioned, neither admitting nor denying anything as to the rights
of Great Britain thereto. Its first occupation had been by British
freebooters, who "squatted" there a very few years after Jamaica fell.
They went to cut logwood, succeeded in holding their ground against
the efforts of Spain to dislodge them, and their right to occupancy
and to fell timber was allowed afterwards by treaty. Since the
signature of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, this "settlement," as it was
styled in that instrument, has become a British "possession," by a
convention with Guatemala contracted in 1859. Later, in 1862, the
quondam "settlement" and recent "possession" was erected, by royal
commission, into a full colony, subordinate to the government of
Jamaica. Guatemala being a Central American state, this constituted a
distinct advance of British dominion in Central America, contrary to
the terms of our treaty.
A more important claim of Great Britain was to the protectorate of the
Mosquito Coast,--a strip understood by her to extend from Cape Gracias
á Dios south to the San Juan River. In its origin, this asserted right
differed little from similar transactions between civilized man and
savages, in all times and all places. In 1687, thirty years after the
island was acquired, a chief of the aborigines there settled was
carried to Jamaica, received some paltry presents, and accepted
British protection. While Spanish control lasted, a certain amount of
squabbling and fighting went on between the two nations; but when the
questions arose between England and the United States, the latter
refused to acquiesce in the so-called protectorate, which rested, in
her opinion, upon no sufficient legal ground as against the prior
right of Spain, that was held to have passed to Nicaragua when the
latter achieved its independence. The Mosquito Coast was too close to
the expected canal for its tenure to be considered a matter of
indifference. Similar ground was taken with regard to the Bay Islands,
Ruatan and others, stretching along the south side of the Bay of
Honduras, near the coast of the republic of that name, and so uniting,
under the control of the great naval power, the Belize to the Mosquito
Coast. The United States maintained that these islands, then occupied
by Great Britain, belonged in full right to Honduras.
Under these _de facto_ conditions of British occupation, the United
States negotiator, in his eagerness to obtain the recession of the
disputed points to the Spanish-American republics, seems to have paid
too little regard to future bearings of the subject. Men's minds also
were dominated then, as they are now notwithstanding the intervening
experience of nearly half a century, by the maxims delivered as a
tradition by the founders of the republic who deprecated annexations
of territory abroad. The upshot was that, in consideration of Great
Britain's withdrawal from Mosquitia and the Bay Islands, to which, by
our contention, she had no right, and therefore really yielded nothing
but a dispute, we bound ourselves, as did she, without term, to
acquire no territory in Central America, and to guarantee the
neutrality not only of the contemplated canal, but of any other that
might be constructed. A special article, the eighth, was incorporated
in the treaty to this effect, stating expressly that the wish of the
two governments was "not only to accomplish a particular object, but
to establish a general principle."
Considerable delay ensued in the restoration of the islands and of the
Mosquito Coast to Honduras and Nicaragua,--a delay attended with
prolonged discussion and serious misunderstanding between the United
States and Great Britain. The latter claimed that, by the wording of
the treaty, she had debarred herself only from future acquisitions of
territory in Central America; whereas our government asserted, and
persistently instructed its agents, that its understanding had been
that an entire abandonment of all possession, present and future, was
secured by the agreement. It is difficult, in reading the first
article, not to feel that, although the practice may have been perhaps
somewhat sharp, the wording can sustain the British position quite as
well as the more ingenuous confidence of the United States negotiator;
an observation interesting chiefly as showing the eagerness on the one
side, whose contention was the weaker in all save right, and the
wariness on the other, upon whom present possession and naval power
conferred a marked advantage in making a bargain. By 1860, however,
the restorations had been made, and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty since
then has remained the international agreement, defining our relations
to Great Britain on the Isthmus.
Of the subsequent wrangling over this unfortunate treaty, if so
invidious a term may be applied to the dignified utterances of
diplomacy, it is unnecessary to give a detailed account. Our own
country cannot but regret and resent any formal stipulations which
fetter its primacy of influence and control on the American continent
and in American seas; and the concessions of principle over-eagerly
made in 1850, in order to gain compensating advantages which our
weakness could not extort otherwise, must needs cause us to chafe now,
when we are potentially, though, it must be confessed sorrowfully, not
actually, stronger by double than we were then. The interest of Great
Britain still lies, as it then lay, in the maintenance of the treaty.
So long as the United States jealously resents all foreign
interference in the Isthmus, and at the same time takes no steps to
formulate a policy or develop a strength that can give shape and force
to her own pretensions, just so long will the absolute control over
any probable contingency of the future rest with Great Britain, by
virtue of her naval positions, her naval power, and her omnipresent
capital.
A recent unofficial British estimate of the British policy at the
Isthmus, as summarized in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, may here have
interest: "In the United States was recognized a coming formidable
rival to British trade. In the face of the estimated disadvantage to
European trade in general, and that of Great Britain in particular, to
be looked for from a Central American canal, British statesmen,
finding their last attempt to control the most feasible route (by
Nicaragua) abortive, accomplished the next best object in the interest
of British trade. They cast the onus of building the canal on the
people who would reap the greatest advantage from it, and who were
bound to keep every one else out, but were at the same time very
unlikely to undertake such a gigantic enterprise outside their own
undeveloped territories for many a long year; while at the same time
they skilfully handicapped that country in favor of British sea power
by entering into a joint guarantee to respect its neutrality when
built. This secured postponement of construction indefinitely, and yet
forfeited no substantial advantage necessary to establish effective
naval control in the interests of British carrying trade."
Whether this passage truly represents the deliberate purpose of
successive British governments may be doubtful, but it is an accurate
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.
Action, however, to be consistent and well proportioned, must depend
upon well-settled conviction; and conviction, if it is to be
reasonable, and to find expression in a sound and continuous national
policy, must result from a careful consideration of present conditions
in the light of past experiences. Here, unquestionably, strong
differences of opinion will be manifested at first, both as to the
true significance of the lessons of the past, and the manner of
applying them to the present. Such differences need not cause regret.
Their appearance is a sign of attention aroused; and when discussion
has become general and animated, we may hope to see the gradual
emergence of a sound and operative public sentiment. What is to be
deprecated and feared is indolent drifting, in wilful blindness to the
approaching moment when action must be taken; careless delay to remove
fetters, if such there be in the Constitution or in traditional
prejudice, which may prevent our seizing opportunity when it occurs.
Whatever be the particular merits of the pending Hawaiian question, it
scarcely can be denied that its discussion has revealed the existence,
real or fancied, of such clogs upon our action, and of a painful
disposition to consider each such occurrence as merely an isolated
event, instead of being, as it is, a warning that the time has come
when we must make up our minds upon a broad issue of national policy.
That there should be two opinions is not bad, but it is very bad to
halt long between them.
There is one opinion--which it is needless to say the writer does not
share--that, because many years have gone by without armed collision
with a great power, the teaching of the past is that none such can
occur; and that, in fact, the weaker we are in organized military
strength, the more easy it is for our opponents to yield our points.
Closely associated with this view is the obstinate rejection of any
political action which involves implicitly the projection of our
physical power, if needed, beyond the waters that gird our shores.
Because our reasonable, natural--it might almost be called
moral--claim to preponderant influence at the Isthmus heretofore has
compelled respect, though reluctantly conceded, it is assumed that no
circumstances can give rise to a persistent denial of it.
It appears to the writer--and to many others with whom he agrees,
though without claim to represent them--that the true state of the
case is more nearly as follows: Since our nation came into being, a
century ago, with the exception of a brief agitation about the year
1850,--due to special causes, which, though suggestive, were not
adequate, and summarized as to results in the paralyzing
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,--the importance of the Central American Isthmus
has been merely potential and dormant. But, while thus temporarily
obscured, its intrinsic conditions of position and conformation bestow
upon it a consequence in relation to the rest of the world which is
inalienable, and therefore, to become operative, only awaits those
changes in external conditions that must come in the fulness of time.
The indications of such changes are already sufficiently visible to
challenge attention. The rapid peopling of our territory entails at
least two. The growth of the Pacific States enhances the commercial
and political importance of the Pacific Ocean to the world at large,
and to ourselves in particular; while the productive energies of the
country, and its advent to the three seas, impel it necessarily to
seek outlet by them and access to the regions beyond. Under such
conditions, perhaps not yet come, but plainly coming, the consequence
of an artificial waterway that shall enable the Atlantic coast to
compete with Europe, on equal terms as to distance, for the markets of
eastern Asia, and shall shorten by two-thirds the sea route from New
York to San Francisco, and by one-half that to Valparaiso, is too
evident for insistence.
In these conditions, not in European necessities, is to be found the
assurance that the canal will be made. Not to ourselves only, however,
though to ourselves chiefly, will it be a matter of interest when
completed. Many causes will combine to retain in the line of the Suez
Canal the commerce of Europe with the East; but to the American shores
of the Pacific the Isthmian canal will afford a much shorter and
easier access for a trade already of noteworthy proportions. A weighty
consideration also is involved in the effect upon British navigation
of a war which should endanger its use of the Suez Canal. The power of
Great Britain to control the long route from Gibraltar to the Red Sea
is seriously doubted by a large and thoughtful body of her statesmen
and seamen, who favor dependence, in war, upon that by the Cape of
Good Hope. By Nicaragua, however, would be shorter than by the Cape to
many parts of the East; and the Caribbean can be safeguarded against
distant European states much more easily than the line through the
Mediterranean, which passes close by their ports.
Under this increased importance of the Isthmus, we cannot safely
anticipate for the future the cheap acquiescence which, under very
different circumstances, has been yielded in the past to our demands.
Already it is notorious that European powers are betraying symptoms of
increased sensitiveness as to the value of Caribbean positions, and
are strengthening their grip upon those they now hold. Moral
considerations undoubtedly count for more than they did, and nations
are more reluctant to enter into war; but still, the policy of states
is determined by the balance of advantages, and it behooves us to know
what our policy is to be, and what advantages are needed to turn in
our favor the scale of negotiations and the general current of events.
If the decision of the nation, following one school of thought, is
that the weaker we are the more likely we are to have our way, there
is little to be said. Drifting is perhaps as good a mode as another to
reach that desirable goal. If, on the other hand, we determine that
our interest and dignity require that our rights should depend upon
the will of no other state, but upon our own power to enforce them, we
must gird ourselves to admit that freedom of interoceanic transit
depends upon predominance in a maritime region--the Caribbean
Sea--through which pass all the approaches to the Isthmus. Control of
a maritime region is insured primarily by a navy; secondarily, by
positions, suitably chosen and spaced one from the other, upon which
as bases the navy rests, and from which it can exert its strength. At
present the positions of the Caribbean are occupied by foreign powers,
nor may we, however disposed to acquisition, obtain them by means
other than righteous; but a distinct advance will have been made when
public opinion is convinced that we need them, and should not exert
our utmost ingenuity to dodge them when flung at our head. If the
Constitution really imposes difficulties, it provides also a way by
which the people, if convinced, can remove its obstructions. A
protest, however, may be entered against a construction of the
Constitution which is liberal, by embracing all it can be constrained
to imply, and then immediately becomes strict in imposing these
ingeniously contrived fetters.
Meanwhile no moral obligation forbids developing our navy upon lines
and proportions adequate to the work it may be called upon to do.
Here, again, the crippling force is a public impression, which limits
our potential strength to the necessities of an imperfectly realized
situation. A navy "for defence only" is a popular catchword. When, if
ever, people recognize that we have three seaboards, that the
communication by water of one of them with the other two will depend
in a not remote future upon a strategic position hundreds of miles
distant from our nearest port,--the mouth of the Mississippi,--they
will see also that the word "defence," already too narrowly
understood, has its application at points far away from our own coast.
That the organization of military strength involves provocation to war
is a fallacy, which the experience of each succeeding year now
refutes. The immense armaments of Europe are onerous; but
nevertheless, by the mutual respect and caution they enforce, they
present a cheap alternative, certainly in misery, probably in money,
to the frequent devastating wars which preceded the era of general
military preparation. Our own impunity has resulted, not from our
weakness, but from the unimportance to our rivals of the points in
dispute, compared with their more immediate interests at home. With
the changes consequent upon the canal, this indifference will
diminish. We also shall be entangled in the affairs of the great
family of nations, and shall have to accept the attendant burdens.
Fortunately, as regards other states, we are an island power, and can
find our best precedents in the history of the people to whom the sea
has been a nursing mother.