THE UNITED STATES--AN IMPERIAL POWER
Following the map of the North-Western Pacific littoral, the eye
encounters, on leaving the coast of China, the Philippine Islands, proof
of the ambition of the United States to hold a place in the Pacific.
It is a common fallacy to ascribe to the United States a Quakerish
temperament in foreign affairs. Certain catch-words of American local
politics have been given a fictitious value, both at home and abroad.
"Republican Simplicity," "The Rights of Man," "European Tyranny,"
"Imperial Aggression," "The Vortex of Militarism"--from these and
similar texts some United State publicists are wont to preach of the
tyranny of European kings and emperors; of their greed to swallow up
weak neighbours; and of the evils of the military and naval systems
maintained to gratify such greed. By much grandiose assertion, or by
that quiet implication which is more complete proof of a convinced mind
than the most grandiose of assertion, the American nation has been
pictured in happy contrast to others, pursuing a simple and peaceful
life; with no desire for more territory; no wish to interfere with the
affairs of others; in the world, but not of the world.
Astonishment that such professions should carry any weight at all in the
face of the great mass of facts showing that the American national
temper is exactly the reverse of Quakerish, is modified in the political
student by the fact that it is the rule for nations as well as
individuals to be judged in the popular estimation by phrases rather
than by facts. Ignoring the phrases of politicians and considering only
the facts, it will be found that the American people have Imperial
ambitions worthy of their ancestry and inseparable from the
responsibility towards civilisation which their national greatness
involves.
It was in the middle of the eighteenth century that the United States
began national housekeeping within a small territory on the seaboard of
the Atlantic. By the nineteenth century that area had extended over a
section of the continent of America as large almost as Europe. By the
twentieth century this Power, still represented as incurably "peaceful
and stay-at-home" by its leaders, was established in the Caribbean Sea,
on the Isthmus of Panama, in the North and South Pacific, along the
coast of Asia, and had set up firmly the principle that whatever affair
of the world demanded international attention, from a loan to China, to
the fate of an Atlantic port of Morocco, the United States had
"interests" which must be considered, and advice which must be
regarded. The only circumstance that genuinely suggests a Quaker spirit
in United States foreign diplomacy is her quaint directness of language.
More effete peoples may wrap every stage of a negotiation up to an
ultimatum in honeyed phrases of respect. America "tutoyers" all courts
and is mercilessly blunt in claim and warning.
It would be very strange if the United States were otherwise than
Imperial in spirit. Nations, like individuals, are affected by
biological laws; a young, strong nation is as naturally aggressive and
ambitious as a young, strong boy. Contentment with things as they are, a
disposition to make anxious sacrifices to the gods who grant peace, are
the signs of old age. If a boy is quite good his parents have a
reasonable right to suspect some constitutional weakness. A new nation
which really resembled what a great many of the American people think
the United States to be, would show as a morbid anomaly. No; the course
of the world's future history will never be correctly forecasted except
on the assumption that the United States is an aggressively Imperial
nation, having an influence at least equal to that of any European Power
in the settlement of international issues; and determined to use that
influence and to extend its scope year by year. In the Problem of the
Pacific particularly, the United States must be counted, not merely as a
great factor but the greatest factor.
If the American citizen of to-day is considered as though he were a
British citizen of some generations back, with a healthy young appetite
for conquest still uncloyed, some idea near to the truth will have been
reached. But since the deference exacted by public opinion nowadays
compels some degree of pretence and does not permit us to parade our
souls naked, it is improbable that the United States citizen of this
century will adopt the frank freebooting attitude of the Elizabethan
Englishman when he was laying the foundations of his Empire by methods
inspired somewhat by piracy as well as by patriotism. The American will
have to make some concession to the times and seek always a moral
sanction for the extension of his boundaries. Such a search, however, is
rarely made in vain when it is backed by a resolved purpose. It was
sufficient for Francis Drake to know that a settlement was Spanish and
rich. The attack followed. The United States needs to know that a
possession is foreign, is desirable, and is grossly ill-governed before
she will move to a remonstrance in the sacred name of Liberty. Since
good government is an ideal which seldom comes at all close to
realisation, and the reputation of no form of administration can survive
the ordeal of resolute foreign criticism, the practical difference is
slight. The American Empire will grow with the benediction always of a
high moral purpose; but it will grow.
It is interesting to recall the fact that at its very birth the United
States was invested by a writer of prophetic insight with the purple of
Empire. Said the _London Gazette_ of 1765:--"Little doubt can be
entertained that America will in time be the greatest and most
prosperous Empire that perhaps the world has ever seen." But the early
founders of the new nation, then as now, deceived themselves and others
with the view that a pacific little Republic, not a mighty Empire, was
their aim. The Imperial instinct showed, however, in the fact that the
baby nation had in its youngest days set up a formidable navy. It was
ostensibly "for the local defence of its shores," but naval power and
overseas Empire are inseparably linked.
The austere Republic began to grow in territory and influence at a rate
putting to shame the early feats of the Roman power. By 1893 the United
States had made it clear that she would not allow her independence to be
fettered in the slightest degree by any claims of gratitude from France:
and her Declaration of Neutrality in the European War then raging was a
clear statement of claim to be considered as a Power. The war with the
Barbary States in 1802 to suppress piracy was a claim to police rights
on the high seas, police rights which custom gives only to a paramount
sea Power. By the next year Spain and France had been more or less
politely relieved of all responsibilities in North America, and the
United States stretched from ocean to ocean, and from the Great Lakes to
the Gulf of Mexico.
It is upon the early eloquence of her founders as to the duty of the
United States to confine her attention strictly to America, that the
common misconception of America's place in foreign policy has been built
up. That talk, however, was in the first instance dictated largely by
prudence. Alexander Hamilton, who controlled the foreign policy of the
infant Republic at the outset, was particularly anxious that she should
find her feet before attempting any deeds of enterprise. In particular,
he was anxious that the United States should not, through considerations
of sentiment, be drawn into the position of a mere appanage of France.
He set the foundations of what was known afterwards as the "Monroe
doctrine," with the one thought that, at the time, a policy of
non-interference with European affairs was a necessary condition of free
growth for the young nation. The same idea governed Washington's
farewell address in 1796 with its warning against "foreign
entanglements."
Afterwards the "Monroe doctrine"--deriving its name from a message by
President Monroe in 1823--was given the meaning that the United States
would not tolerate any interference with the affairs of the American
continent by Europe. Finally the "Monroe doctrine," which had begun with
an affirmation of America's non-participation in European affairs, and
had developed into a declaration against European interference with
American affairs, took its present form, which is, in effect, that over
all America the United States has a paramount interest which must not be
questioned, and that as regards the rest of the world she claims an
equal voice with other Powers. Yet, though that is the actual position,
there is still an idea in some minds that the Monroe doctrine is an
instrument of humbleness by which the United States claims the immunity
of America from foreign interference and guarantees foreign countries
from American interference.
It will be of value to recall, in illustration of the rapid growth of an
aggressive national pride in the United States, the circumstances which
led up to Mr. President Monroe's formal message in 1823. The dawn of the
nineteenth century found the young American nation, after about a
quarter of a century's existence, fairly on her feet; able to vindicate
her rights abroad by a war against the Barbary pirates: given by the
cession of Louisiana from France, a magnificent accession of territory.
The Empire of Spain was crumbling to pieces, and between 1803 and 1825
the Latin-American Republics in South and Central America were being
established on the ruins of that Empire. Spain, her attention engaged in
European wars, was able to do little or nothing to assert herself
against the rebellious colonies. But in 1815, Napoleon having been
vanquished, the Holy Alliance in Europe attempted to reassert the old
power of the European monarchies. The terror of Napoleon's army had
forced the kings of the earth into a union which forgot national
differences and was anxious only to preserve the Divine Right of Kings.
The formation of this Holy Alliance was viewed with suspicion and
dislike in the United States, and when in 1823 the Alliance raised the
question of joint action by European monarchies to restore Spanish rule
in South America, the United States responded with Monroe's famous
message forbidding any European interference on the continent of
America. Such European colonies as already existed would be tolerated,
and that was all. The message stated:
"The American continents by the free and independent conditions
which they have assumed are henceforth not to be considered as
subjects for future colonisation by any European Power.
"We could not view any interposition for purpose of oppressing them
or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European
Power in any other way than as the manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition towards the United States."
That "Monroe doctrine" was destined to be extended greatly in scope. In
1845 Mr. President Polk declared that no future European colony should
be planted on any part of the North American continent, and laid it down
as the duty of the United States "to annex American territory lest it be
annexed by European countries." True to that faith, he was responsible
for the annexation of Texas, Oregon and California. The United States
claim to overlordship of North America was still more remarkably
extended in 1867, when a protest was entered against the Federation of
the Canadian Provinces. The protest was not insisted upon then, though
in 1870 Mr. President Grant revived the spirit of the protest with his
forecast of "the end of European political connection with this
continent." The Venezuela controversy between Great Britain and the
United States in 1895 was responsible for another extension of the
Monroe doctrine. It was then claimed that "foreign colonies ought to
cease in this hemisphere." Insistence on that would, however, have led
to a war in which Great Britain probably would have had the assistance
of other European Powers affected; and the Monroe doctrine receded a
little.
Exactly how this chief article of the United States foreign policy
stands to-day one cannot say. Certainly the Monroe doctrine does not
mean, as it was once supposed to mean, that the United States in return
for foreign abstention from interference in American affairs pledges
herself to keep apart from all extra-American affairs. In world politics
she claims and exercises the privileges to which her vast resources and
her high state of civilisation are the warrants. In regard to American
affairs the Monroe doctrine clearly forbids any further European
colonisation in North or South America, and constitutes the United
States as the Suzerain Power of all the Latin-American Republics
(whether they are willing or not). What else it will be found to mean
will depend on the circumstances of the moment and the feelings of the
newspaper proprietors who exercise so great an influence on the
American man-in-the-street, the governing factor in shaping his
country's foreign policy. In European countries, however democratic, the
man-in-the-street has rarely any immediate authority over Foreign
Affairs. In Great Britain, for example, the questions of the relations
of the Government with other countries are not canvassed before the
voters. The close oligarchy of the Cabinet (acting often with the
Opposition Front Bench) comes to decisions of peace and war, of treaty
and _entente_, and, after decision, allows Parliament and the electorate
to acquiesce. But in the United States foreign policy is actually
dictated by the voters; and that means, in effect, by the newspapers. On
occasion the Monroe doctrine has already been interpreted into a notice
to quit to all European Powers holding settlements on the American
continent. It may in the near future revive that claim to paramount and
exclusive authority, and it may cover a declaration of direct suzerainty
over Mexico, and over the smaller republics intervening between the
United States border and the Panama Canal. In most Latin-American
republics disorder is the rule rather than the exception; and it may
become at any moment the honest opinion of the man-in-the-street of the
United States that the Panama Canal is too important to civilisation to
be left to the chances of interference from less stable governments than
his own.
These conclusions are inevitable to anyone making any study of American
history and the American character. They are not hostile criticisms.
They are rather appreciations. A great nation with a belief in its
destiny must be "Imperialist" in spirit, because it has a natural desire
to spread the blessings of its rule. The people of the United States
believe as strongly in themselves as did the ancient Hebrews, and all
must have a genuine respect for that fierce spirit of elect nationality
which made the Hebrews found a great nation on a goat-patch. In
Elizabethan England the same spirit flourished and was responsible for
the founding of the British Empire. (It survives still in the British
Isles, though somewhat spasmodically.) There is no ground at all either
for wonder or for complaint in the fact that Imperialism has been born
to vigorous life in the United States, where the people of "God's own
country" are firm in these two articles of faith: that any interference
in the affairs of the United States is unjust, unnecessary, tyrannical
and impious; that any United States interference with another nation is
a necessary and salutary effort on behalf of civilisation. Let no man of
British blood complain. But let no one in making calculations of world
policy be deceived into any other conclusion than that the United States
is the great Imperial force of this century, and also the one Power that
has enough of the splendid illusions of youth to indulge in crusading
wars, for which Europe nowadays is too old and cautious.
In the countries of Europe other than Great Britain that which I have
stated is coming to be generally recognised, and if at any time a
combination could be proposed with any hope of success "to put America
in her place," the combination would be formed and the Old World would
grapple with the New to try conclusions. Without Great Britain, however,
such an alliance would have at present no chance of success, and British
adherence is not within the realm of practical thought to-day.
The Imperialist tendency of United States policy is shown with
particular clarity in the history of the Pacific Ocean. Very early in
her life the vigorous young nation saw the Fates beckoning her across
the Pacific. The downfall of the Spanish power in North America left the
United States heir to a great stretch of rich coast line, including the
noble province of California. Russia was ousted from the north-west
coast of the Continent by a wise purchase. Before then, American whalers
sailing out of Boston had begun to exploit the Southern Pacific. Their
whaling trips brought back knowledge of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Group,
and, following exactly the methods of British colonisation, American
missionaries were the pioneers of American nationalisation. As far back
as 1820 Hiram Bingham preached his first sermon at Honolulu from the
text, "Fear not, for, behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy." A
handsome church now marks the gratitude of his native converts. With
equal justice Bingham's American compatriots might have set up a great
statue to him as the first warden of the Marches of the Pacific for the
United States. For from that day the annexation of Hawaii was
inevitable. The process took the familiar course. First the United
States Republic exercised a benevolent suzerainty over the Hawaiian
kingdom. Then the blessing of free institutions was bestowed on the
natives by the foundation of an Hawaiian Republic. The next step was
definite annexation. Following that, came steps for the formation of a
great naval base at Honolulu.
When I visited the Hawaiian Group in the spring of 1909 the work of
fortifying Honolulu was being pushed on with great vigour, and the
American military and civil authorities boasted of their intention to
make it the Gibraltar of the Pacific. The city of Honolulu has at
present a very small harbour, a little bay to which access is given by
an opening in the coral reefs which surround the island. This port would
hardly afford shelter to a squadron of cruisers. But to the left as one
enters is Pearl Harbour, a magnificent stretch of land-locked water
sufficient to float a great Fleet. But Pearl Harbour basin in its
natural state is too well protected, there being no means of access
except for very small boats. American energy is now remedying that, and
a deep-water channel is being cut from Honolulu Harbour to Pearl Harbour
to take vessels of the largest draught at all tides. When that channel
is completed, Pearl Harbour will be at once commodious and easily
protected. The single narrow entrance will be dominated by the guns of
Malakiki Hill, a great eminence, somewhat like Gibraltar in shape, to
the right of the town, which commands the sea-front east and west: and
within Pearl Harbour the American Pacific Fleet will find a safe haven.
It will be absolutely impregnable from the sea. Hostile ships
approaching Honolulu would have to steer straight for Malakiki and then
defile amid the coral reefs past its guns before the entrance to Pearl
Harbour would open before them.
But land defence has also to be taken into account. The chief male
element of the Hawaiian population is not American, not native Hawaiian.
It is Japanese. The Mikado's subjects represent now the largest fighting
element in the population, outnumbering even the natives. These
Japanese, imported as coolies for the sugar-fields, are mostly men of
military training. Further influx of them has now been stopped, not
under an Immigration Restriction Act, but by private treaty with Japan;
and, as a measure of precaution, an Arms Registration Ordinance provides
that no citizen shall have in his possession firearms unless he is
licensed by the Government. But this precaution would be in vain if
Japan ever seriously thought of using her 50,000 soldier-citizens in the
Hawaiian Group against the United States; for the whole of the fishing
industry is in the hands of the Japanese, and their sampans could land
arms at various places on the islands with ease. Such a contingency has
been foreseen in the laying out of Honolulu as a naval base, and the
land fortifications are designed with the same thoroughness as those
designed to beat off a sea attack.
A glance at the map will show that the Power which holds Hawaii with a
powerful Fleet can dominate the whole of the Northern Pacific,
threatening every point east and west. The American position there is
weakened by only one circumstance, the great Japanese population. This,
though it may not be recruited with further drafts of males from its
native source, will always be a very considerable, if not the most
considerable, element of the Hawaiian population, for most of the
coolies are married, and the Japanese abroad as well as at home fills
the cradle industriously.
I remember on the morning of April 1, 1909, coming into Honolulu city
from the Moana Hotel on the sea-beach, I found the tram rushed by
Japanese at all the stopping places. Two cruisers of their navy had
entered the harbour--cruisers which were once upon a time the Russian
_Variag_ and _Koreitz_. All Japan in Honolulu was making holiday. A
fleet of sampans (the Japanese fishing-vessel) surrounded the ships,
which commemorated so signally a great and successful war. The water
front was lined with Japanese, the women and children mostly in their
national costume. One Japanese father came on to the tram with seven
boys, the eldest of whom did not seem more than ten years of age.
Asked, he said that they were all his own children. There will never be
a lack of a big Japanese population in Hawaii.
The definite acquisition of Hawaii may be fairly dated from 1851. Before
then there had been a significant proof of America's gaze turning
westward by the appointment in 1844 of Mr Caleb Cushing as the United
States Ambassador to the Court of China. A little later (1854) the
American Power found the Japanese policy of exclusiveness intolerable,
and United States warships broke a way into Japanese ports. It had also
been decided by then that the task, originally undertaken by a French
Company, of cutting a waterway across the Panama Isthmus should be the
responsibility of the United States. British susceptibilities on the
point were soothed by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty guaranteeing the
neutrality of the canal, a treaty which was subsequently abrogated in
response to the increasing deference which the growing power of the
American Republic could exact. That abrogation created the present
position which gives the United States sole control of that canal, and
the right to fortify its entrances.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, therefore, the United States, a
Power which some people still insist on regarding as an essentially
domestic character interested only in purely American affairs, had
established herself in a commanding strategical position in the North
Pacific, had constituted herself the arbiter of Japanese national
manners, and had obtained the control of the future waterway from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. The second half of the same century was
destined to see an even more remarkable Imperial expansion. The
misgovernment of Cuba by Spain became intolerable to American public
opinion, and in 1898 war was declared with the avowed purpose of
conferring the blessings of freedom on the people of Cuba. If one
accepted the nonsensical view that the United States is a Power lifted
above ordinary human nature by some mysterious racial alchemy, it would
be difficult to understand why a war to free Cuba should also have been
waged in another ocean to acquire the Philippines. But, looking at the
matter in a sane light, it was natural that, being engaged in a war with
Spain, the United States should strike at Spain wherever a blow was
possible and should destroy the Spanish power in the Pacific Ocean as
well as in the Caribbean Sea. Besides, the opportunity offered of
stretching the arm of America right across the Pacific to the very coast
of Asia. The Filipinos did not relish the substitution for the weak rule
of Spain of the strong rule of the United States, and American
Imperialism had the experience of having to force, by stern warfare on
the liberated, acceptance of its rôle of liberator. Perhaps the
experience taught it some sympathy with older players at the game of
Empire-making: certainly it did not abate its ardour in the good work.
So much for the past history of the United States in the Pacific. A
forecast of her influence on the future of the ocean is clearly
indicated by the past. The United States spread from the east of the
North American continent to the west, because there is no method known
to prevent the extension of a highly civilised, a young, an ardent
nation at the expense of backward, effete and tired peoples. It was
impossible that either the Red Indian tribes or the picturesque old
settlements of the Californian Spanish should stand in the way of the
American Republic stretching from ocean to ocean. Once the United States
was established on the Pacific coast, it was equally inevitable that the
arm of her power should stretch across the ocean. The acquisition of the
Hawaiian Group was necessary for the sound defence of the coast. The
American trading ships which sought the coast of Asia and found barbaric
barriers against commerce being battered down by European venturers, had
to do as the other White Men did. The flag thus had to follow in the
wake of the trade. It was all natural, necessary and ultimately
beneficial to civilisation. Equally inevitable will be the future
expansion of the United States in the Pacific. The overwhelming strength
of her industrial organisation will give her a first call on the neutral
markets of the ocean--_i.e._ those markets to which she has the same
right of access as her trade rivals. As the tendency shows for the area
of those neutral markets to narrow through coming under the domination
of various Powers, the United States will seek to extend her domination
too. The protection of what she has will enforce the need of acquiring
other strategical points. So her Pacific possessions will grow, almost
unconsciously, just as the British Empire grew.