e been to us not
imminent, so that, like all distant dangers, they have received little
regard; and also because, with our great resources only partially
developed, the instinct to external activities has remained dormant.
At the same period and from the same causes that the European world
turned its eyes inward from the seaboard, instead of outward, the
people of the United States were similarly diverted from the external
activities in which at the beginning of the century they had their
wealth. This tendency, emphasized on the political side by the civil
war, was reinforced and has been prolonged by well-known natural
conditions. A territory much larger, far less redeemed from its
original wildness, and with perhaps even ampler proportionate
resources than the continent of Europe, contained a much smaller
number of inhabitants. Hence, despite an immense immigration, we have
lagged far behind in the work of completing our internal development,
and for that reason have not yet felt the outward impulse that now
markedly characterizes the European peoples. That we stand far apart
from the general movement of our race calls of itself for
consideration.

For the reasons mentioned it has been an easy but a short-sighted
policy, wherever it has been found among statesmen or among
journalists, to fasten attention purely on internal and economical
questions, and to reject, if not to resent, propositions looking
towards the organization and maintenance of military force, or
contemplating the extension of our national influence beyond our own
borders, on the plea that we have enough to do at home,--forgetful
that no nation, as no man, can live to itself or die to itself. It is
a policy in which we are behind our predecessors of two generations
ago, men who had not felt the deadening influence of merely economical
ideas, because they reached manhood before these attained the
preponderance they achieved under politicians of the Manchester
school; a preponderance which they still retain because the youths of
that time, who grew up under them, have not yet quite passed off the
stage. It is the lot of each generation, salutary no doubt, to be
ruled by men whose ideas are essentially those of a former day.
Breaches of continuity in national action are thus moderated or
avoided; but, on the other hand, the tendency of such a condition is
to blind men to the spirit of the existing generation, because its
rulers have the tone of their o