of American foreign policy second
only in importance to the establishment of a stable American
international organization; and in relation to these questions, also,
the interests of the United States and Canada tend both to coincide and
to diverge (possibly) from those of Great Britain. Just what form the
Chinese question will assume, after the industrial and the political
awakening of China has resulted in a more effective military
organization and in greater powers both of production and consumption,
cannot be predicted with any certainty; but at present, it looks as if
the maintenance of the traditional American policy with respect to
China, viz., the territorial integrity and the free commercial
development of that country, might require quite as considerable a
concentration of naval strength in the Pacific as is required by the
defense of the Philippines. It is easy enough to enunciate such a
policy, just as it is easy to proclaim a Monroe Doctrine which no
European Power has any sufficient immediate interest to dispute; but it
is wholly improbable that China can be protected in its territorial
integrity and its political independence without a great deal of
diplomacy and more or less fighting. During the life of the coming
generation there will be brought home clearly to the American people how
much it will cost to assert its own essential interests in China; and
the peculiar value of the Philippines as an American colony will consist
largely in the fact that they will help American public opinion to
realize more quickly than it otherwise would the complications and
responsibilities created by Chinese political development and by
Japanese ambition.

The existence and the resolute and intelligent facing of such
responsibilities are an inevitable and a wholesome aspect of national
discipline and experience. The American people have too easily evaded
them in the past, but in the future they cannot be evaded; and it is
better so. The irresponsible attitude of Americans in respect to their
national domestic problems may in part be traced to freedom from equally
grave international responsibilities. In truth, the work of internal
reconstruction and amelioration, so far from being opposed to that of
the vigorous assertion of a valid foreign policy, is really correlative
and supplementary thereto; and it is entirely possible that hereafter
the United States will be forced into the adoption of a really national
domestic