they are likely not to want their own way
in matters where their interests turn on points of disputed right, or
so little sensitive as to submit quietly to encroachment by others, in
quarters where they long have considered their own influence should
prevail?

Our self-imposed isolation in the matter of markets, and the decline of
our shipping interest in the last thirty years, have coincided
singularly with an actual remoteness of this continent from the life of
the rest of the world. The writer has before him a map of the North and
South Atlantic oceans, showing the direction of the principal trade
routes and the proportion of tonnage passing over each; and it is
curious to note what deserted regions, comparatively, are the Gulf of
Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the adjoining countries and islands. A
broad band stretches from our northern Atlantic coast to the English
Channel; another as broad from the British Islands to the East, through
the Mediterranean and Red Sea, overflowing the borders of the latter in
order to express the volume of trade. Around either cape--Good Hope and
Horn--pass strips of about one-fourth this width, joining near the
equator, midway between Africa and South America. From the West Indies
issues a thread, indicating the present commerce of Great Britain with
a region which once, in the Napoleonic wars, embraced one-fourth of the
whole trade of the Empire. The significance is unmistakable: Europe has
now little mercantile interest in the Caribbean Sea.

When the Isthmus is pierced, this isolation will pass away, and with it
the indifference of foreign nations. From wheresoever they come and
whithersoever they afterward go, all ships that use the canal will pass
through the Caribbean. Whatever the effect produced upon the prosperity
of the adjacent continent and islands by the thousand wants attendant
upon maritime activity, around such a focus of trade will centre large
commercial and political interests. To protect and develop its own,
each nation will seek points of support and means of influence in a
quarter where the United States always has been jealously sensitive to
the intrusion of European powers. The precise value of the Monroe
doctrine is understood very loosely by most Americans, but the effect
of the familiar phrase has been to develop a national sensitiveness,
which is a more frequent cause of war than material interests; and over
disputes caused by such feelings there will pr