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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 30, 1900)
I Tft * 10 'Cbe Conservative * THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. The foreign relations of the United States have recently assumed increased importance. They have also become , more than ever , the subject of popular concern and decision. Various and com plicated questions now present them selves so frequently that public thought , through every organ of its expression , is engaged upon them daily. Formerly the conduct of these rela tions was reserved and occult. The mystery has in these later years , been made almost entirely plain to every body. The fact that the senate is , by the constitution , a part of the treaty- making power has , evulgato imperil ar- caiio , revealed , by a process somewhat like that indicated by the terse phrase of Tacitus , at once the method and reasons of negotiations , and has subjected them to the influence of contemporary opin ion. For our diplomacy is now con trolled by public opinion. It formerly relied upon the power of the administra tion to coerce or persuade sanction after the diplomatic act had been done. This power has passed away. The foreign policy of this country has usually been of that formal character which consists in negotiating those con ventions which maintain the peaceful intercourse of states. We have fol lowed , with few exceptions , the wise advice of Washington , not to involve ourselves in entangling alliances with European states , and to preserve our peculiar and powerful isolation from their political concerns has been the line upon which our foreign relations have been conducted. We have been too remote , and our latent power has been too great to be attacked , or even made the subject of serious diplomatic ag gression by European states , singly erin in combination. With the exception of our war against Mexico , our conduct towards the nations of tke western hemisphere has been friendly and un selfish beyond any example in history. We have acquired by puchase , territory on this continent larger in area than that which our fathers wrested from Great Britain by conquest. Wo paid Mexico for provinces which we could have taken from her as the legitimate and unremu- uerated spoil of war. As to any expansion of our dominions , it has never been asserted by the most adverse critic of our institutions that the cause of civilization and human freedom would not be thereby promoted. We have had no alliances with foreign powers excepting that with France , made in 1778 , which wo evaded ; that respecting Samoa with Great Britain and Germany , which was most provi dently terminated by the treaty of 1803 , nudthe sterile and exasperating Clayton- Bulwer convention of 1850 , the result of a most indefensible and inexplicable negotiation , from which wo ought to disengage ourselves in its entirety at the earliest possible moment. We have treaties with all the states of the world , but their basis and spirit are peace , com merce and the guaranty of civil and religions rights. We broke through the wall of Chinese exclusion in many places. We threw open wide the ports of Japan and gave the first impulse to that wonderful transformation of an Oriental despotism , most artificial and complicated in its feudalism , into a con stitutional monarchy with legislative , executive , and judicial departments in check and balance against each other. We have been the model protective monitor of the Central and South Amer ican states , and under our tutelage , they have advanced slowly , it is true , but surely , towards stability. Under our example the British colonies to the north of us have become in substance a repub lic of almost perfect autonomy. We have kept Europe and its mon archical institutions out of the American continents by the fiat of the Monroe doctrine , which has been self-executing except as to Mexico at a time when all our powers were engrossed in a great civil war , but which was obeyed when that war ended. It has sometimes happened that a nation has , all at once and from a pre cise and perceptible date , appeared for the first time , as by a summons , as a permanent actor in large and general international politics. England did so during the Protectorate of Cromwell ; Russia did so during the reign of Peter the Great ; Prussia did so in the last century ; Japan has done so within the last thirty years. For more than a century the United States was not an appreciable factor in the wars , the diplomacies , the expan sions , the dismemberments , and the revolutions of the other states of the world. By an impulse , providential or evolu tionary , but irresistible , civilization has , during the present generation moved all at once and in concert in a process of territorial expansion as sudden and in explicable as that which at the close of the fifteenth century impelled the na tions of Europe to voyages which re sulted in the discovery and occupation of America. Within the last few years the continent of Africa has been sub jected to European partition. China is now under dismemberment. Through out this vast expansive process no for eign power seemed to think , nor indeed had it any need to think of the United States. We were merely languid and willing spectators. Two naval victories in the war with Spain , as decisive as Salainis or Trafal gar , demonstrated that the United States had become a sea power in fact. The skill of our officers , the marksmaii- Bhip of our gunners , the bravery and fighting efficiency of our crews , the superb and faultless mechanism of our steel leviathans , assured us and con vinced other nations that the pastoral , farming , mechanical , mining giant of the western world had become some thing more than he had seemed , and that he at last walked the rounds of national defense and honor "clad in complete steel. " I think it can bo safely said that they who once threatened intervention be tween the United States and Spain abandoned that desire quickly after the momentous events of Manila and Santi ago , and will never again entertain the design of a similar intrusion under any circumstances that we can now imagine. I believe that these victories have done more to assure the peace of the world than all the alliances and international concerts which have been effected dur ing the last fifty years. The treaty of Paris extirpated Spain from her Asiatic and American insular possessions , and gave Porto Rico and the Philippine archipelago to the United States. The United States will command the greatest part of the commerce with the Chinese Orient. We can produce every article that can be sold in this new and limitless market. To conduct that com merce we need to cross only one ocean ; Europe must traverse the Atlantic , the Mediterranean , the Red sea , and the Pacific. Ancillary to this vantage of position on the American continent we possess the Philippines , undoubtedly the richest of all the islands of the seas , flanking the coast of China for 1,200 miles , Hawaii and the insular extension of Alaska which impends over middle Asia , thus dominating southeastern Asia and the Asiatic Pacific ocean. The situation thus imperfectly stated , introduced new elements into our for eign policy. The question was , what were to be the rights and status of the United States respecting trade and intercourse under these new conditions of partition , occupation and spheres of influence ? The action of Secretary Hay in the solution of this problem was diligent and wise. He stated to the great pow ers what was desired and expected by the United States in notes of the same tenor to each government. Assurances were promptly and unreservedly given by Great Britain , Germany , Russia , France , Italy and Japan. No diplomatic achievement in our history , excepting the treaty negotiated by Franklin by which our independence was acknowledged , and the conventions by which Louisiana and the provinces of Mexico were acquired , can be placed be fore this negotiation. It did not expand our possession , but it will expand our influence and ascendency immeasur ably. It is the result , however , of the two expansions as to Louisiana and Mexico , and of the acquisition of the
