, no state lives to itself alone, in a
political seclusion resembling the physical isolation which so long
was the ideal of China and Japan. All, whether they will or no, are
members of a community, larger or, smaller; and more and more those of
the European family to which we racially belong are touching each
other throughout the world, with consequent friction of varying
degree. That the greater rapidity of communication afforded by steam
has wrought, in the influence of sea power over the face of the globe,
an extension that is multiplying the points of contact and emphasizing
the importance of navies, is a fact, the intelligent appreciation of
which is daily more and more manifest in the periodical literature of
Europe, and is further shown by the growing stress laid upon that arm
of military strength by foreign governments; while the mutual
preparation of the armies on the European continent, and the fairly
settled territorial conditions, make each state yearly more wary of
initiating a contest, and thus entail a political quiescence there,
except in the internal affairs of each country. The field of external
action for the great European states is now the world, and it is
hardly doubtful that their struggles, unaccompanied as yet by actual
clash of arms, are even under that condition drawing nearer to
ourselves. Coincidently with our own extension to the Pacific Ocean,
which for so long had a good international claim to its name, that sea
has become more and more the scene of political development, of
commercial activities and rivalries, in which all the great powers,
ourselves included, have a share. Through these causes Central and
Caribbean America, now intrinsically unimportant, are brought in turn
into great prominence, as constituting the gateway between the
Atlantic and Pacific when the Isthmian canal shall have been made, and
as guarding the approaches to it. The appearance of Japan as a strong
ambitious state, resting on solid political and military foundations,
but which scarcely has reached yet a condition of equilibrium in
international standing, has fairly startled the world; and it is a
striking illustration of the somewhat sudden nearness and unforeseen
relations into which modern states are brought, that the Hawaiian
Islands, so interesting from the international point of view to the
countries of European civilization, are occupied largely by Japanese
and Chinese.

In all these questions we have a