or because some Malay and half-breed
insurgents said they wanted us away.

[Sidenote: The Future.]

Have you considered for whom we hold these advantages in trust? They
belong not merely to the seventy-five millions now within our borders,
but to all who are to extend the fortunes and preserve the virtues of
the Republic in the coming century. Their numbers cannot increase in
the startling ratio this century has shown. If they did the population
of the United States a hundred years hence would be over twelve hundred
millions. That ratio is impossible, but nobody gives reasons why we
should not increase half as fast. Suppose we do actually increase only
one fourth as fast in the Twentieth Century as in the Nineteenth. To
what height would not the three hundred millions of Americans whom even
that ratio foretells bear up the seething industrial activities of the
continent! To what corner of the world would they not need to carry
their commerce? What demands on tropical productions would they not
make? What outlets for their adventurous youth would they not require?
With such a prospect before us, who thinks that we should shrink from
an enlargement of our national sphere because of the limitations that
bound, or the dangers that threatened, before railroads, before ocean
steamers, before telegraphs and ocean cables, before the enormous
development of our manufactures, and the training of executive and
organizing faculties in our people on a constantly increasing scale for
generations?

Does the prospect alarm? Is it said that our Nation is already too
great, that all its magnificent growth only adds to the conflicting
interests that must eventually tear it asunder? What cement, then, like
that of a great common interest beyond our borders, that touches not
merely the conscience but the pocket and the pride of all alike, and
marshals us in the face of the world, standing for our own?

What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? Hold fast! Stand
firm in the place where Providence has put you, and do the duty a just
responsibility for your own past acts imposes. Support the army you
sent there. Stop wasting valuable strength by showing how things might
be different if something different had been done a year and a half
ago. Use the educated thought of the country for shaping best its
course now, instead of chiefly finding fault with its history. Bring
the best hope of the future, the colleges and the generation t