to cultivate the good-will of
the United States, and to draw closer the relations between the two
countries. For the disposition underlying such a tendency Mr. Balfour
has used an expression, "race patriotism,"--a phrase which finds its
first approximation, doubtless, in the English-speaking family, but
which may well extend its embrace, in a time yet distant, to all those
who have drawn their present civilization from the same remote
sources. The phrase is so pregnant of solution for the problems of the
future, as conceived by the writer, that he hopes to see it obtain the
currency due to the value of the idea which it formulates. That this
disposition on the part of Great Britain, towards her colonies and
towards the United States, shows sound policy as well as sentiment,
may be granted readily; but why should sound policy, the seeking of
one's own advantage, if by open and honest means, be imputed as a
crime? In democracies, however, policy cannot long dispute the sceptre
with sentiment. That there is lukewarm response in the United States
is due to that narrow conception which grew up with the middle of the
century, whose analogue in Great Britain is the Little England party,
and which in our own country would turn all eyes inward, and see no
duty save to ourselves. How shall two walk together except they be
agreed? How shall there be true sympathy between a nation whose
political activities are world-wide, and one that eats out its heart
in merely internal political strife? When we begin really to look
abroad, and to busy ourselves with our duties to the world at large in
our generation--and not before--we shall stretch out our hands to
Great Britain, realizing that in unity of heart among the
English-speaking races lies the best hope of humanity in the doubtful
days ahead.

In the determination of the duties of nations, nearness is the most
conspicuous and the most general indication. Considering the American
states as members of the European family, as they are by traditions,
institutions, and languages, it is in the Pacific, where the westward
course of empire again meets the East, that their relations to the
future of the world become most apparent. The Atlantic, bordered on
either shore by the European family in the strongest and most advanced
types of its political development, no longer severs, but binds
together, by all the facilities and abundance of water communications,
the once divided children of the