h the question is wholly
European, all know enough of it to be aware that the interest and
control of the sea powers is among the chief, if not the first, of the
elements that now fix the situation; and that they, if intelligently
used, will direct the future inevitable changes. Upon the western
continents the political condition of the Central American and
tropical South American States is so unstable as to cause constant
anxiety about the maintenance of internal order, and seriously to
interfere with commerce and with the peaceful development of their
resources. So long as--to use a familiar expression--they hurt no one
but themselves, this may go on; but for a long time the citizens of
more stable governments have been seeking to exploit their resources,
and have borne the losses arising from their distracted condition.
North America and Australia still offer large openings to immigration
and enterprise; but they are filling up rapidly, and as the
opportunities there diminish, the demand must arise for a more settled
government in those disordered States, for security to life and for
reasonable stability of institutions enabling merchants and others to
count upon the future. There is certainly no present hope that such a
demand can be fulfilled from the existing native materials; if the
same be true when the demand arises, no theoretical positions, like
the Monroe doctrine, will prevent interested nations from attempting
to remedy the evil by some measure, which, whatever it may be called,
will be a political interference. Such interferences must produce
collisions, which may be at times settled by arbitration, but can
scarcely fail at other times to cause war. Even for a peaceful
solution, that nation will have the strongest arguments which has the
strongest organized force. It need scarcely be said that the
successful piercing of the Central American Isthmus at any point may
precipitate the moment that is sure to come sooner or later. The
profound modification of commercial routes expected from this
enterprise, the political importance to the United States of such a
channel of communication between her Atlantic and Pacific seaboards,
are not, however, the whole nor even the principal part of the
question. As far as can be seen, the time will come when stable
governments for the American tropical States must be assured by the
now existing powerful and stable States of America or Europe. The
geographical position of