The Pacific Triangle

by Sydney Greenbie

Unfortunately, Johnny Appleseed died in Indiana, at the early age of seventy-two. Had he lived twice as long he would most likely have reached the coast. By most he was regarded as rather a queer character, but there were men who felt the current of greatness in his being, and to-day Johnny Appleseed might well be hailed as the symbol of America.

For if the virtue of England lay in that process of selection which was the result of "the roving of a race with piratical and poetic instincts invading old England where few stocks arrived save by stringent selection of the sea," how much more is the hardihood of pioneering the very bone and marrow of America. For the sifting process here did not end merely by the crossing of the Atlantic. To those who broke through the fears of the Atlantic, lanced the gathering ills of Europe, that Eastern ocean was only the symbol of a tradition. The way has been kept open by the passage of millions of men and women and children who, year after year, for four centuries, have been invading young America. But what is that coming compared with the arduous reaching out across the wilderness of this vast continent itself, a reaching that left its mile-stones in the form of log cabins, graves, and roaring cities. Following the trade-winds or beating up against the billows of the Northern seas was a joyous pastime compared with the windless waiting and tireless pressing on of the prairie schooner. The conquest of the mountains, of the Mississippi, of the treeless plains, of the desert, and of the rocky barriers in the farthest West is a story replete with tragic episodes, and it is destined to become the dominating tradition of America.

It is a strange story, and because it was essentially so lowly in its early impulse, because it was seemingly a secondary phenomenon, snobs and cynics dispose of it with indifference. The movement westward was undertaken by men of small means and little culture. Pathetic in its simple requirements, seeking fortunes that always lay on the fringe of fortune, moving on with a restlessness that seemed to despise rest and ease, it still left in its wake sorrows that approached tragedy but never felt it. If "Main Street" is a necessary corrective, "The Son of the Middle Border" is the crystallization of an unconscious ideal. This westward movement is a vivid rehearsal of a belated migration that tells the tale of man's first yielding to the mobile impulse in his nature, an impulse that has made of him the conqueror of the globe. These thousands of Johnny Appleseeds were not utilitarian seekers after wealth alone; in them was the unconscious mother principle yielding to the forces that were fathering a new race.

And that new race has come. Centuries of arduous trial and tribulation have molded it. Go where you will, except for some slight differences in tonal expression, there is one people. Beneath their Americanism are the crude complexes resulting from a war between refinement and the unkind forces of nature. The pioneers had all known what civilization meant, but circumstances thwarted their inclinations. They brought with them a respect for woman which no other people had known so well. Primitive and Oriental people—and many European races of to-day—do not have the same exalted notion of woman, simply because they have developed along with women whose functions of life were determined by the savage circumstances. But Americans found themselves in the continent with few women, and those in danger of savage ruthlessness. Hence they became doubly concerned for their welfare, even to the point of sentimentalism.

So, too, with regard to personal liberty. The pioneer knew what his freedom meant to him, and fought for it as a lion or a tiger fights for his. Too frequently his own freedom could be bought only at the expense of others around him. The word itself became a magic with esoteric properties. Hence we find throughout our West a fanatical regard for the term "freedom" that sometimes works itself into a frenzy of intolerance. So fine are the achievements of our coast states, on so high a level is the standard of life, that men cannot see the exceptions. When such are pointed out to them there arises in their unconscious a fear of those horrible days, a something which terrified their childhood and which must be downed as the ghost of a crime one imagines himself to have committed. Hence, not to be "with" certain people in the West in the shouting adulation of their state or their city or their orchards is a worse sacrilege than counteracting one prayer by another ritual. The winning of the West was the aim of all the pioneers. For years and years they were faced with the most obvious threats to its consummation. Mountains, climate, savages, European jealousies, lack of population,—everything that spelled despair stood before them. But an uncomprehended passion drove them on. Perhaps it was the recrudescence of intolerance which marked the early settlers in the East. Perhaps it was the lack of opportunity resulting from overcrowding after the advertisement of the desirability of life in America. It may have been any one of a dozen possibilities that kept men and women moving on and on and on,—nor always, by any means, the yielding to ideals. But on it was and on it continued till the Pacific was reached.

This, superficially, is the accepted story of the development of our West. I have attempted neither criticism nor laudation. It is an unavoidable approach to the discussion of America's place in the Pacific, an approach which even the most Western of our Westerners is not always prone to take cognizance of. But within it lies the kernel of future American life. To some, like the founders of the State of Oregon, it was more defined. Some as early as 1844 realized that to the nation which developed the coast lands belonged the spoils of the Pacific and in its hands would lie the destinies of the largest ocean on the globe. The opening of the Panama Canal has placed the Pacific at the door-step of New York, and fulfilled the dream.

But to the vast majority of people on the coast to-day, occupation and development of those enormous areas seem to carry with them opportunity, but little responsibility. They have one concern which is akin to fear, and that is of the Japanese. They only vaguely grasp the significance of their fate. They do not see that they have hauled in a whale along with their catch and that unless they are skilful they will drag the whole nation into the sea with them.

But if they have forgotten the vision for the appearance of the catch, what about the East? The East is as indifferent to matters pertaining to the Pacific and the West. Its face is turned toward Europe. We think that America is a nation, but the utter ignorance of one section with regard to another, the lounging in local ease, is appalling. Easterners are like the philosopher who when told that his house was on fire, said it was none of his business, for hadn't he a wife to look after such things! These are strange phenomena in a democracy. People think that they discharge their duty by voting, but how many people are in the least concerned with the problems that will some day light up the country like a prairie fire? Westerners are generally much more acquainted with Eastern affairs. As unpleasant as is the promotion publicity of Los Angeles, it is a much more healthful condition than the seeming ignorance of New York in matters pertaining to Los Angeles.

Yet while the East is aflame over affairs in Europe—the Irish Republic, for instance—it probably thinks that Korea is the name of a Chinese joss over which no civilized man should bother to yap about. This indifference is not to be found in the man on the street alone. That man is often uninformed simply because the dispensers of information are uninformed. There is much he would want if he knew its value to him. And so while we are becoming embroiled in European affairs another and henceforward more sinister problem is threatening to back-wash over us.

It was while in such an apathetic state that America changed her status from a continental republic to a colonial empire. Few Americans have ever taken any interest in their insular possessions. Hawaii and the rest had fallen to the lot of the Government, and would sooner or later be returned; that was the sum and substance of their outlook on the whole affair. That the Monroe Doctrine ceased to be a real factor with the acquisition of these outlying possessions, that we virtually abrogated it, did not seem to matter much. At large, the notion was that American altruism would never involve the country in any difficulty.