There is no need to multiply instances, though there are many others—notably during the period of "reconstructing" the conquered states after the war. The constitution offers no more substantial obstacle to the acquisition of territory in the Philippines than it did in the other cases cited, provided only that public expediency and the demand of the people are on the other side.
Scarcely less importance is attributed by the anti-expansionists to our alleged "historical policy of isolation," which, we are told, would be violated by thrusting our hands as a nation into the larger affairs of international politics. For some reason the idea seems to prevail that George Washington and other statesmen of his period designed the Republic for a remote, parochial career, hedged about by a Chinese wall, excluding all foreign influence from our affairs and retaining our own energies within our own boundaries. "America for the Americans," is the shibboleth of this school of political philosophers, and they really seem to believe that the Republic will in some way be happier and richer if we keep aloof entirely and forever from the rest of the world.
As a matter of fact, the only nation on earth that has ever maintained such a policy to its logical end and conclusion is China, and China is now awaiting participation in a grand international banquet, whereat, like Polonius, she is not to eat but to be eaten.
As for the United States, if any nation ever came into existence and has lived under the fierce light of international politics, it has been this Republic of ours. To be sure, our trade policy of recent years has been framed on the Chinese model—"America for the Americans"—and in consequence we are now brought face to face with a retaliatory policy on the part of the powers of continental Europe which may easily shut us out of the world's market at the hour of our greatest need. But of that, more later on.
In point of fact, we have been a "world power" from the very moment of our birth as a nation, or even before it. Our Declaration of Independence, that beautiful synthesis of paradoxes, became from the moment of its publication a powerful factor in the world's progress. "Among all peoples," says Professor Tyler, "it has everywhere been associated with the assertion of the natural rights of man. To every struggling nation it has been a model and an inspiration." And Buckle, the English historian, declares that its effect in hastening the French Revolution "was most remarkable." No state paper of modern times has exercised so wide an authority.
Geographically, we are a nation lying athwart a continent, from ocean to ocean, and in the immediate highway of the world's traffic from west to east and from east to west. Between 1821 and 1898 no less than eighteen millions of Europeans landed upon our shores to become a part of our citizenship and complete its truly cosmopolitan character.
As for the policy of our Government, it has been that of a world power from the start. Almost our first important act as a government was to cast in our lot with France, for the express purpose of disturbing the balance of power in Europe. And that purpose was realized. In December, 1776, Congress sent out a fleet of privateers which became a scourge to our enemies on the high seas. As early as 1777, we had commissioners, who soon became ministers, at Paris, taking active and important part in a conference of the powers. Five years later, Franklin, John Adams and Jay sat in the congress at Paris, "almost as arbiters," a contemporary record says, so powerful was their voice in the conference.
Washington's much-talked-of proclamation of neutrality, says Professor Bushnell Hart, was never intended to keep the United States from contact or entanglement with European powers, but only so wisely to shape our course (at that time) that we should be free to fight or keep the peace as our interest should dictate.
It was the United States which first ventured to send a fleet to the Mediterranean to suppress the Barbary pirates—an act from which all the civilized world benefited. Indeed, it is within the limits of truth to say that the period of our liveliest intercourse with foreign powers was the identical period of "the fathers" who are so often and so falsely quoted as urging the policy of isolation that would sooner or later reduce us to the condition of the Chinese Empire.