Mr. B. O. Flower contributes an article to the discussion,[19] entitled "The Proposed Federation of the Anglo-Saxon Nations," favouring an alliance. The key-note of his views is contained in this passage[20]:
"But beyond a common blood, language, and mutual interests, rises the factor which above all others is fundamental, and which more than aught else makes such an alliance worthy of serious consideration, and that is the common ideal or goal to which all the moral energies of both people are moving, the spirit which permeates all English-speaking nations, namely, popular sovereignty, or self-government; that is, republicanism in essence."[21]
Mr. Richard Olney, in a convincing argument[22] on international isolation of the United States, explains the doctrine of Washington's warning to his countrymen, "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world," as follows:
"The Washington rule of isolation, then, proves on examination to have a much narrower scope than the generally accepted versions given to it. Those versions of it may and undoubtedly do find countenance in loose and general and unconsidered statements of public men both of the Washington era and of later times, . . . Nothing can be more obvious, therefore, than that the conditions for which Washington made his rule no longer exist. . . . There is a patriotism of race as well as of country—and the Anglo-American is as little likely to be indifferent to the one as to {227} the other. Family quarrels there have been heretofore and doubtless there will be again, and the two peoples, at a safe distance which the broad Atlantic interposes, take with each other liberties of speech which only the fondest and dearest relatives indulge in. Nevertheless, they would be found standing together against any alien foe by whom either was menaced with destruction or irreparable calamity, it is not permissible to doubt. Nothing less could be expected of the close community between them in origin, speech, thought, literature, institutions, ideals—in the kind and degree of the civilisation enjoyed by both."
In an article entitled "Shall the United States be Europeanised?"[23] Mr. John Clark Ridpath violently opposes an alliance. He states:
"The time has come when the United States must gravitate rapidly towards Europe or else diverge from Europe as far and as fast as possible.
"This is an overwhelming alternative which forces itself upon the American people at the close of the nineteenth century; in the twentieth we shall be either Europeanised or democratized—the one or the other. There is no place of stable equilibrium between the two. This is true for the reason that there can be no such thing as a democratic monarchy; no such thing as a monarchical republic; no such thing as a popular aristocracy; no such thing as a democracy of nabobs.
"The twentieth century will bring us either to democracy unequivocal or to empire absolute. All hybrid combinations of the two are unstable; they break and pass away. Either the one type or the other must be established in our Western hemisphere. The democratic Republic which we thought we had, and which we so greatly prized and fought for, must now sheer off from Europe altogether, or else sail quietly back to Europe and come to anchor. Shall we or shall we not go thither?"
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In another article, entitled "The United States and the Concert of Europe,"[24] he says: