At that time Germany might have preferred to see the Islands in the hands of the United States rather than in those of any other European power. It was apparently to the interest of the United States to encourage the activities of that great artery of emigration, the Hamburg-American Line. She did not believe that the United States would fail to raise the spectre of the Monroe Doctrine against either of the nations who owned Bermuda or Mauritius, if one of them proposed to place her flag over St. Thomas.
In 1892 the question of Spain's buying St. Thomas, in order to defend Puerto Rico, thrown out by an obscure journalist, was a theory to laugh at. Germany was practically indifferent to our acquisition of islands on the Atlantic coast that might possibly bring us one day in collision with either England or France. As to the Pacific, her point of view was different.
Her politicians even then cherished the sweet hope that the Irish in the United States and Canada might force the hand of our Government against 'perfidious Albion' if the slightest provocation was given. Besides, in 1868, Germany had done her worst to the Danes. She had taken Slesvig, and had ruined Denmark financially; she had made Kiel the centre of her naval hopes; she could neither assume Denmark nor borrow the $7,500,000—then a much greater sum than now—for her own purposes. I have never had reason to believe that Germany prevented the sale of the Danish Antilles in 1902.
The Congressional Examination of the scandalous rumours that might have reflected on the honour of certain Danish gentlemen and of some of our own Congressmen are a matter of record, and show no traces of any such domination. Curiously enough, there was a persistent rumour of a secret treaty with Denmark which gave the United States an option on the Islands. No such treaty existed, and no Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs of my acquaintance would have dreamed of proposing such an arrangement.
It is hardly necessary to dwell here on the value of these Islands to the United States. President Roosevelt, President Wilson, Senator Lodge, most persistently, made the necessity of possessing these islands, through legitimate purchase, very plain.
The completion of the Panama Canal increased their already great importance. If such men as Seward, Foster, Olney, Root, Hay, and our foremost naval experts considered them worth buying before the issues raised by the creation of the Panama Canal were practical, how much more valuable had they become when that marvellous work was completed! Many interests contributed to the desirability of our acquiring islands in the West Indies—every additional island being of value to us—but the great public seemed to see this as through a glass—darkly.
Puerto Rico was of little value in a strategic way without the Danish Antilles. A cursory examination of the map will show that Puerto Rico, with no harbours for large vessels and its long coast line, would offer no defences against alien forces. Naval experts had clearly seen the hopelessness of defending San Juan. Major Glassford, of the Signal Corps, in a report often quoted and carefully studied by people intelligently interested in the active enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine rather than its mere statement as a method of defence on paper, said that 'St. Thomas might be converted into a second Gibraltar.' He was right. The frightful menace of the cession of Heligoland to Germany was an example of what might happen if we failed to look carefully to the future. Besides, even those advocates of peace, right or wrong, who infested our country before the war, who were not sympathetic with the acquisition of territory, ought to have remembered that one of the best guarantees of peace was to leave nothing to fight about as far as these islands of value in our relations 'to the region of the Orinoco and the Amazon' and the Windward Passages were concerned. The German occupation of Brazil—increasing so greatly that the Brazilians were alarmed, the European prejudices, made evident during the Spanish-American War as existing in South and Central America—were all occasions for thought.
'The harbour of Charlotte Amalie,' wrote Major Glassford, writing of St. Thomas, 'and the numerous sheltered places about the island offer six and seven fathoms of water. Besides, this harbour and the roadsteads are on the southern side of the island, completely protected from the prevailing strong winds. If this place were strongly fortified and provisioned'—the number of inhabitants are small compared with Puerto Rico—'it would be necessary for an enemy contemplating a descent upon Puerto Rico to take it into account first. The location on the north-east side of the Antilles is in close proximity to many of the passages into the Caribbean Sea, and affords an excellent point of observation near the European possessions in the archipelago. It is also a centre of the West Indian submarine cable systems, being about midway between the Windward Passage and the Trinidad entrance into the Caribbean Sea.'
Other interests distracted attention from the essential value of these islands for local reasons, party reasons, which are the curse of all modern systems of government. The failure to purchase the Islands in 1892 did not discourage Senator Lodge. On March 31st, 1898, the Committee on Foreign Affairs reported a bill authorising the President to buy the Danish West India Islands for a naval and coal station. On this bill, Senator Lodge made a most interesting and valuable report, in which he said, after stating that the fine harbour of St. Thomas possessed all the required naval and military conditions—'It has been pointed out by Captain Mahan, as one of the great strategic points in the West Indies.' 'The Danish Islands,' he concluded, 'could easily be governed as a territory, could be readily defended from attack, occupy a commanding strategic position, and are of incalculable value to the United States, not only as part of the national defences, but as removing by their possession a very probable cause of foreign complications.'
My predecessors in Denmark, Messrs. Risley, Carr, Svendsen, were of this opinion. The arguments of Mr. Carr, expressed in his despatches, are invincible. Mr. O'Brien, who was minister plenipotentiary to Denmark until he was sent as ambassador to Japan, saw, as I did, in 1907, that the Danes and their Government were in no mood to accept any suggestions on the subject. However, I discussed the matter academically with each minister of Foreign Affairs, saying that the United States would make no proposition at any time which might offend the national self-respect of the Danes, that in fact, as valuable as the Islands would be to us and as expedient as it might be for the Danes to sell them to us, their Government must give some unequivocal sign that it was willing to part with them before we should seriously take up the question again. Neither Count Raben-Levitzau nor Count William Ahlefeldt-Laurvig gave me any official encouragement, though I hardly expected it as I had taken means to sound public opinion on my own account. Both Count Raben-Levitzau and Count Ahlefeldt were Liberal Ministers of Foreign Affairs, and I knew that, if there was any hope that a sale might be made, they would give me reasonable encouragement. Besides, I was doubtful whether the price—which might probably be asked—reasonable enough in my eyes and in the eyes of those European diplomatists who knew what Heligoland and Gibraltar meant to Germany and to England—would not have raised such an outcry among voters at home, who had not yet learned to weigh any transaction with a foreign Government—except commercially, in terms of dollars and cents, that another failure might have followed. It was out of the question to risk that.