but she was less concerned about the
fate of Mexico, the chief victim of our expansion.

{41}

This complementary relation of ours with European nations was as useful
to us as to them. Besides furnishing us with necessary capital Europe
sent us immigrants, who made our march across the Continent rapid and
irresistible. In the end this immigrant population contributed to our
peaceful attitude. As the number of our alien stocks increased, the
desirability of going to war with any European nation diminished. To
get the immigrant's vote, we spoke highly, and in the end almost
thought highly, of the nations from which they had come. By admitting
the children of Europe we had given hostages to peace.

In the main, however, we paid no attention to Europe. We forgot about
her. Lost in contemplation of our own limitless future, we turned our
eyes westward towards our ever receding frontier. In foreign, as in
home relations, we developed a frontier mind, and even to-day, long
after our last frontier has been reached, we are still thinking of
Europe, as of so many of our internal problems, in terms of this great
colonising adventure. The individualist, who pushed his way across the
continent, left on America the impress of a simple philosophy, a belief
that there was a chance for all, that it was better to work than to
fight, that arbitration and the splitting of the difference were the
best policy. To the average American, with his frontier mind, wars
seemed unnecessary, and all the class distinctions, inseparable from
militarism, a mere frippery. Wars, he held, are for the crowded old
peoples of Europe, with their dynastic superstitions, their cheating
diplomacy, their ancient rancours, their millions of paupered subjects,
condemned to a life of subordination. Wars are not for the free and
equal Americans who live in the wide spaces of a continent and, having
no neighbours, hate no man and fear no man.

It is out of this frontier mind that we have evolved our {42} present
American notion of war and foreign policy. Peace is common sense; war,
foolishness, a superstition like the belief in Kings, Emperors and
Potentates, a calamity caused by the refusal of the petty European
nations to join into one great United States. For it must be
remembered that Americans, whatever their sentimental attachments, are
really more contemptuous than are Germans of little nations that insist
upon surviving. We ridicule the Euro