And be it clearly understood that in all I have said, I merely indicate what I believe to be the inevitable drift of things—the handwriting upon the wall. With the public morality and the intermediate questions of international law depending on {47} that morality, I am not at present concerned. It is impossible to regulate these questions in advance, and it is assuredly true that such considerations, however well grounded, have never long delayed a general tendency. History, in all its stages, conjectural, traditional, and authentic, discloses with almost painful clearness that there are underlying forces governing the progress of the human race, which are made manifest in successive ages only by their results, and with which conscious volition seems to have but little to do. We in this country only exemplify a general truth (a truth easily ascertainable by a glance at our circumstances), which operates none the less strongly because with our cultivated sentiments we sometimes rebel against its necessary sequences. The only question for me is, how can this truth be best applied—how best utilised. If I am right in what I have said of the Anglo-Saxon race in its two great branches, the inference becomes clear. To that race primarily belongs in a preponderating degree the future of mankind, because it has proved its title to its guardianship. But it is in the firm union of that race, in its steady co-operation, and in its undeviating adherence to its common ideals, that the whole success of the experiment, or of what remains of the experiment, now depends.
[1] I select in this connection an extract from an article in the North American Review, June, 1898, by Hon. David Mills, Canadian Minister of Justice, entitled "Which shall dominate, Saxon or Slav?"
"Let us consider the aims of Russia, as shown by what she has attempted and accomplished in modern times. The Russian statesman loves conquest. With him it is a habit of mind. Russia is a great Asiatic power, employing the resources of western civilisation to further her ambitious designs. Her conquests are not the outcome of industrial enterprise. They have not sprung from the necessities of commerce. Her acquisitions have not arisen from a desire to find a profitable investment for her capital. They are due entirely to a love of dominion. In the last century, she acquired all the territory lying between her western border, and the Gulf of Bothnia, and the Baltic Sea. She acquired the greater part of Poland and the whole of Crim-Tartary. In this century she has obtained Finland from Sweden, Bessarabia and a part of Armenia from Turkey. She has acquired the Caucasus, Georgia, several provinces of Persia, and the whole country from the Caspian Sea, on the west, to the borders of China, on the east, including Samarcand, Bakhara, Khiva, and Merv, besides a large section of North-eastern China. Russia is the one great state of the world that pays no regard to her treaty obligations longer than it is convenient for her to do so. Her territories cover an area nearly three times as large as the United States, and are being constantly extended. If she finds resistance at any point upon her borders, she rests there, and pushes forward her boundaries where those upon whom she encroaches are not prepared to stay her march. What she acquires is hers absolutely, the trade of the people no less than her dominion over them. Not the slightest reliance can be put upon her promises. She regards falsehood as a legitimate weapon in diplomacy, as deceit is in war. In Afghanistan, which she declared to be outside of the sphere of Russian diplomacy, and within the sphere of diplomacy of England, she carried on constant intrigues against English authority. Her representatives sought to stir up rebellion. She endeavoured to obtain the consent of its rulers for the construction of a road that would lead to India, and for the purchase of supplies that would support an army of invasion on their march. She never gives up any purpose which she has once formed. More than eight centuries ago she marched an army of 80,000 men to conquer the Byzantine Empire, and to seize Constantinople. What she then undertook, and failed to accomplish, she has never abandoned. It has been from time to time postponed for a more fitting opportunity. She lost six great armies in the march from the Caspian to Samarcand, and two centuries elapsed from the time when she contemplated this conquest before it was consummated. If the Russian Empire holds together, she counts on the conquest of Turkey, of Persia, of India, and of China.
"If Russia succeeds in the task to which she has set herself she will hold seventeen millions of square miles of territory, and she will have under her dominion nine hundred millions of people. The fall of the British Empire is regarded by Russian statesmen as essential to the realisation of her hopes. Let me ask: What would be the position of the world, with so much territory and so many people under one ruler, wielding the power necessary to the realisation of his wishes? It is only necessary to study the commercial and industrial policy of Russia to discover that she would trample into the earth every people that might aspire to better their position or to become in any way her rivals. In every department of commerce, and in every field in which greatness might be achieved, her rulers would regard any attempt at success as an attack upon her supremacy.
"In the discussion of this question I embrace the United States as a part of the Anglo-Saxon community. I do so because, in the present position of the race, and of the work which obviously lies before it, the loss of British supremacy in the world would be scarcely less disastrous to the United States than it would be to the British Empire. It is true that the United States, under the present order of things, has room for further expansion. But the present order of things rests upon Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Even within her existing limits, she may grow for many years to come; and if Turkey, Persia, India, and China were added to the empire of Russia, the whole position of the world would be completely changed; the condition of things on this continent would be revolutionised. With the power thus centred under Russian control and directed from St. Petersburg, with the valley of the Euphrates occupied by Russians devoted to agriculture, with the frontiers of that mighty Empire resting upon the Indian Ocean; and with the whole commerce of Asia in her possession, Russia would, as a natural consequence of these tremendous additions, become the dominant sea power. The Pacific Ocean would be a Russian lake, and her eastern frontiers would rest upon the western shore of North America. The British Islands would rapidly diminish in population, until the number of inhabitants would be such as the product of the soil would naturally support. The United Kingdom could no longer be a market for the breadstuffs of this continent, and European immigration to America would cease. Russia would rapidly grow in wealth and in population, but no country in the Western Hemisphere would do either; for the great markets of the world would be in the possession of a power that would use them to cripple the commerce of any state which would, in any degree, aspire to become her rival.
"In the highest sense the United States has not, and cannot have, an independent existence. Her fortune is inseparably associated with the race to which she belongs, in which her future is wrapt up, and in which she lives and moves and has her being. The unity between the United States and the British Empire is a matter both of race and growth. They touch each other, and as peoples unite and great states arise, they must be, for all great international purposes, one people."
[2] The World Almanac and Encyclopedia, 1903. p. 353.
[3] See in this connection an interesting article by Henry Charles Lea, entitled "The Decadence of Spain," Atlantic Monthly, July, 1898.
[4] In 1801, 20.9 per cent. of the people who spoke the European languages were Spanish, and only 12.7 per cent. were English; but in 1890 the ratio was changed to 13.9 per cent. Spanish and 27 per cent. English.
[5] Act of Congress, April 20, 1898.