stake, reluctantly it may be, but
necessarily, for our evident interests are involved, in some instances
directly, in others by very probable implication. Under existing
conditions, the opinion that we can keep clear indefinitely of
embarrassing problems is hardly tenable; while war between two foreign
states, which in the uncertainties of the international situation
throughout the world may break out at any time, will increase greatly
the occasions of possible collision with the belligerent countries,
and the consequent perplexities of our statesmen seeking to avoid
entanglement and to maintain neutrality.

Although peace is not only the avowed but for the most part the actual
desire of European governments, they profess no such aversion to
distant political enterprises and colonial acquisitions as we by
tradition have learned to do. On the contrary, their committal to such
divergent enlargements of the national activities and influence is one
of the most pregnant facts of our time, the more so that their course
is marked in the case of each state by a persistence of the same
national traits that characterized the great era of colonization,
which followed the termination of the religious wars in Europe, and
led to the world-wide contests of the eighteenth century. In one
nation the action is mainly political,--that of a government pushed,
by long-standing tradition and by its passion for administration, to
extend the sphere of its operations so as to acquire a greater field
in which to organize and dominate, somewhat regardless of economical
advantage. In another the impulse comes from the restless, ubiquitous
energy of the individual citizens, singly or in companies, moved
primarily by the desire of gain, but carrying ever with them,
subordinate only to the commercial aim, the irresistible tendency of
the race to rule as well as to trade, and dragging the home government
to recognize and to assume the consequences of their enterprise. Yet
again there is the movement whose motive is throughout mainly private
and mercantile, in which the individual seeks wealth only, with little
or no political ambition, and where the government intervenes chiefly
that it may retain control of its subjects in regions where but for
such intervention they would become estranged from it. But, however
diverse the modes of operation, all have a common characteristic, in
that they bear the stamp of the national genius,--a proof that the
var