y that in
certain national crises we have not been impossibly virtuous. We have
not always subordinated our national interests to the ideal of setting
a righteous example. What we wanted and could get we got, whether it
was Florida, Texas, California or Panama. We were not above the
twisting or even the breaking of a treaty, we did not discourage
filibustering expeditions too rigorously, and we were never, never
meek. Thus in 1818, to take a single example, we addressed to Spain a
polite communication in which we asserted that "the United States can
as little compound with impotence as with perfidy, and that Spain must
immediately make her election, either to place (an adequate) force in
Florida or cede to the United States a province, of which she retains
nothing but the nominal possession." Many of our communications to
Mexico, Chile, Spain, and even England were equally arrogant.

The truth is that our peace has been a peace of circumstances, due to a
favouring geographical and economic situation. Our peacefulness came
down to us like our rivers, farms and cities, a heritage of exceptional
conditions. We were inaccessible to European armies. We were supreme
on a fertile, sparsely settled continent. We could afford peace. Our
resources were immensely great and if {35} we did not reach out for
more, it was because we already had as much as we could handle. What
we did need we could take from weak peoples, and a nation which fights
weak peoples need not be martial, just as a man who robs orphans need
not be a thug.

It might have been different. Had our Westward progress been opposed
by millions of Indians, had France been able to resist our march beyond
the Appalachians, or Mexico stood like a disciplined Germany between us
and the Westward Ocean, we should have developed a military
civilisation. As our growing population pressed upon our narrow
frontiers, we should have had our war scares, our border conflicts, our
national hatreds, our huge standing army, and the whole paraphernalia
of militarism.

Still another element, besides our geographical isolation and our
economic self-sufficiency, contributed to our intactness and security
and permitted us to indulge in the luxury of pacifism. Europe
protected us from Europe. We were one and the European Powers many.
So delicate was the balance that the European nations could not hazard
a really serious trans-Atlantic venture. They had little to gain and