In a view of the past American transportation methods, and of that natural Monroe doctrine whose basis lies in the abundant natural richness of the environment of the American temperate zone, it is no unbiased prophecy to suggest that this question will eventually be settled, not by the government of the United States, not by the government of England, not by the government of Canada, but by the people themselves. If the transportation of the future shall make Canada and the United States alike, then assuredly the people will attend to the rest, and care not what may be the politics or the government of either the one land or the other. The eventual settlement of the West may mean a country in which there shall be small distinction between Canada and the United States, small distinction between the latter and the more desirable parts of the republic of Mexico on the south. If these questions shall be settled in Washington or Ottawa, it is safe prophecy to believe that it will be in the railroad offices and not the governmental offices of those respective cities. It takes more than politics to suppress the instinct that seeks individual well being. It takes more than politics to prevent water from running down-hill.
The reply to such prophecy or foreboding, or guessing, as one may choose to call it, which has been provided by the government of England, is not apt to take any form different from the ancient policy of England, which after all is military. England is old and is, or presently will be, decadent. Her bigotry is that of age, her unprogressive slowness of change is senile. She has been the great colonizer; and in so far as the development of transportation facilities has brought her colonies closer home to her, it has given England hope—her only hope—that of existing in the future of her robust children. Yet we find the concern of England to-day to be that of securing military touch with all the corners of the world, rather than that of establishing a flexible and durable system of transportation methods that shall make for the individual well-being of all her widely scattered subjects.
England, concerned with this American invasion of settlers, is to-day planning a great trans-Canadian road, whose western head shall lie somewhere within striking distance of Asia. “This,” says one commentator, “is England’s answer to Russia and the trans-Siberian railway.” To a humble observer it might seem far safer were England concerned, not so much in answering Russia, as in answering the United States.
The best answer to Russia would be multitudes of farms in Western Canada, which one day we may call Western America. She can make that answer only by learning the methods of the United States. Till in some measure she shall have done so, she can not be safe as against the inroads of the American citizens. She can not restore the level of the waters by the building of railroads with military reasons under them. There may be a time in the history of the North American mid-continent when Canada and the United States will agree that it is better to get along comfortably together than it is to aid a far-off and somewhat mythical government to fight its battles somewhere at the end of military roads.
Our little Western secessionists, our little frontier republics cleaved to the government at Washington as soon as the pathways thereto made such loyalty a possible thing. It is nearer from Quebec and Ottawa to Washington, than it is to London. Patriotism is much a matter of transportation. The faster the ocean steamships, the better the telegraphic communication, the nearer Canada is to England; yet at the same time relatively she grows still nearer to the United States.[[66]]
Germane to these questions are those that rise as to the opening of additional avenues of industry at the other end of those pathways that stretch out across the Pacific Ocean. In the mad race for the gates of the imperial city of China, America had no real friends at her side. That was the time when the covetous powers of Europe, owners of lands overpopulated and industries overcrowded, conceived that they had at length opportunity to urge quarrel on a weaker land, with the result of a war in which the weaker power would inevitably be obliged to pay the penalty of unsuccessful resort to arms. England and Germany wished to do what England had been doing in South Africa and elsewhere for some time. They wanted a quarrel and a war, therefore a dismemberment and a division. Water transportation is cheap. The coal and iron of China lie close to water transportation. It had excellently well served the designs of England and Germany to parcel out this land, so full of raw material fit for manufacturing purposes. It had excellently well suited the powers to wipe the barbarians off the map, as has been done in so many South Asiatic and South African transactions of a similar nature. The secret of the Christian indignation at the barbarity of the heathen Chinese is none too much a secret in the frank vision of commercial desire.
The part of America in this game was well played. It is too late now to cry out for an America for Americans. We have squandered our substance, wasted our heritage, played the spendthrift royally as we might. Now it is too late. We may shut our gates on the East, but we must some time take our part in the great game of going abroad in the West. We have not yet felt that time to be near at hand; but it was splendid statesmanship on the part of America that kept China intact for yet a while, and got the armies off her soil.
The blandishments of England and Germany ought not to appeal to America. There is no nation that loves us unselfishly, or that would aid us unselfishly were we in need of help;[[67]] but if it shall one day come to the last bitter game among the nations, there will be none then so well equipped as we. We shall not need to call for aid. An English journal deems it “crude vulgarity” for the United States to think of wresting the maritime supremacy from Great Britain. It may be such, though we are not sure. It was perhaps crude vulgarity when we took America from Great Britain, when we took for ourselves a country so full of natural wealth, a country so perfect for the upbuilding of an aggressive and self-reliant national character. It might be crude vulgarity if we took this whole American continent as our own. Let us hope that this same character may still abide with us when we find need for the farther crude vulgarity of going abroad into the world. That we are meantime going abroad is without question true; not at the direction of our “leaders,” not by reason of our politics, but by reason of our transportation.
The South, always the leader into the West, exclaims politically against the look toward Asia. It is but politics. The Tennessee troops fought well in the Philippines. Not all the world can stop us from thus going abroad. Whether we shall come home again at a later date remains yet to be seen. Whether we shall then have left a home worth the name remains yet to be proved.
Such are some of the localities and situations into which our trails have nationally led us; such some of the problems into which our vaunted Age of Transportation is carrying us. There are new equations, new questions, new problems constantly confronting us with an ever growing urgency. It is not in any wise certain that a dispassionate study of this nature can leave us with a national vanity wholly untouched. It is not altogether sure that the conclusions framed upon our chosen premises, inevitable as they are, can leave the student wholly convinced of either our universal success or our universal happiness.