hem as well as in Manchuria I should say
that the Asiatic area is the more fertile.

The possibilities of such an empire situated in the fairest portion of
Asia's temperate zone are simply illimitable. No one who has been
through the fruitful lands of the American Corn Belt and Wheat Belt
and goes later through Manchuria can fail to note the similarity
between them in physical appearance and natural resources, and it may
well be that what the settlement of the West has meant in America
these last fifty years the development of Manchuria will mean in Asia
these next fifty.

In itself the sheer creation of such a country--larger far than Great
Britain and Germany, as rich as Illinois and Manitoba--would appeal
at once to American commerce and industry, but you have only begun to
grasp the significance of Manchuria when you compare it to the
creation of such an empire in some favored portion of the sea.

Manchuria means all this, but it means more: Its possession would give
such vastly increased influence to any Power possessing it as to make
that Power a menace to the commercial rights of all other nations in
Asia--rights of almost vital importance both to Europe and America.
England and Germany, of course, are already dependent upon foreign
trade for their prosperity, and President McKinley was never so
seerlike as when, in his last speech at Buffalo, he reminded the
American people that their own future greatness depends upon the
development of trade beyond the seas. And it was to Asia, the greatest
of continents, and especially to China, the greatest of countries on
this greatest of continents, that he looked, as we must also look
to-day. In Secretary Hay's memorial address on McKinley, which I had
the good fortune to hear, the dead President's determined efforts to
maintain the ancient integrity of the Dragon Empire were fittingly
mentioned as one of his most distinguished services to his people and
his time. {80} To keep the immense area of China from spoliation by
other nations and to preserve to all peoples equal commercial rights
within boundaries are absolutely essential to the proper future
development of both European and American commerce and industry.

II

This is why the Open Door in Manchuria is a matter of very real
concern to every Occidental citizen; this is why the other nations
after the ending of the Russo-Japanese War were careful to see that
these belligerents guaranteed a continuance of the