ly
signs he recognizes of a nation that knows its rights and dare maintain
them--a nation that has come to stay, with an empire of its own in the
China Sea, and a Navy which, from what he has seen, he believes will be
able to defend it against the world. He straightway concludes, after
the Oriental fashion, that it is a nation whose citizens must
henceforth be secure in all their rights, whose missionaries must be
endured with patience and even protected, and whose friendship must be
sedulously cultivated. The national prestige is enormously increased,
and trade follows prestige--especially in the farther East. Not within
a century, not during our whole history, has such a field opened for
our reaping. Planted directly in front of the Chinese colossus, on a
great territory of our own, we have the first and best chance to profit
by his awakening. Commanding both sides of the Pacific, and the
available coal-supplies on each, we command the ocean that, according
to the old prediction, is to bear the bulk of the world's commerce in
the Twentieth Century. Our remote but glorious land between the Sierras
and the sea may then become as busy a hive as New England itself, and
the whole continent must take fresh life from the generous blood of
this natural and necessary commerce between people of different
climates and zones.

But these developments of power and trade are the least of the
advantages we may hopefully expect. The faults in American character
and life which the Little Americans tell us prove the people unfit for
these duties are the very faults that will be cured by them. The
recklessness and heedless self-sufficiency of youth must disappear.
Great responsibilities, suddenly devolved, must sober and elevate now,
as they have always done in natures not originally bad, throughout the
whole history of the world.

The new interests abroad must compel an improved foreign service. It
has heretofore been worse than we ever knew, and also better. On great
occasions and in great fields our diplomatic record ranks with the best
in the world. No nation stands higher in those new contributions to
International Law which form the high-water mark of civilization from
one generation to another. At the same time, in fields less under the
public eye, our foreign service has been haphazard at the best, and
often bad beyond belief--ludicrous and humiliating. The harm thus
wrought to our national good name and the positive injury to