it. The call to duty, when once plainly
understood, is a call Americans never fail to answer, while to calls of
interest they have often shown themselves incredulous or contemptuous.

But the Constitution we revere was also ordained "to promote the
general welfare," and he is untrue to its purpose who squanders
opportunities. Never before have they been showered upon us in such
bewildering profusion. Are the American people to rise to the occasion?
Are they to be as great as their country? Or shall the historian record
that at this unexampled crisis they were controlled by timid ideas and
short-sighted views, and so proved unequal to the duty and the
opportunity which unforeseen circumstances brought to their doors? The
two richest archipelagos in the world are practically at our disposal.
The greatest ocean on the globe has been put in our hands, the ocean
that is to bear the commerce of the Twentieth Century. In the face of
this prospect, shall we prefer, with the teeming population that
century is to bring us, to remain a "hibernating nation, living off its
own fat--a hermit nation," as Mr. Senator Davis has asked? For our
first Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Hill, was right when he said
that not to enter the Open Door in Asia means the perpetual isolation
of this continent.

[Sidenote: Have they any Value?]

Are we to be discouraged by the cry that the new possessions are
worthless? Not while we remember how often and under what circumstances
we have heard that cry before. Half the public men of the period
denounced Louisiana as worthless. Eminent statesmen made merry in
Congress over the idea that Oregon or Washington could be of any use.
Daniel Webster, in the most solemn and authoritative tones
Massachusetts has ever employed, assured his fellow-Senators that, in
his judgment, California was not worth a dollar.

Is it said that the commercial opportunities in the Orient, or at least
in the Philippines, are overrated? So it used to be said of the
Sandwich Islands. But what does our experience show? Before their
annexation even, but after we had taken this little archipelago under
our protection and into our commercial system, our ocean tonnage in
that trade became nearly double as heavy as with Great Britain. Why?
Because, while we have lost the trade of the Atlantic, superior
advantages make the Pacific ours. Is it said that elsewhere on the
Pacific we can do as well without a controlling political influen