elations to the Hawaiian Islands, taken together with the
other strategic considerations previously set forth, completes the
synopsis of facts which determine the value of the group for conferring
either commercial or naval control.

Referring again to the map, it will be seen that while the shortest
routes from the Isthmus to Australia and New Zealand, as well as those
to South America, go well clear of any probable connection with or
interference from Hawaii, those directed toward China and Japan pass
either through the group or in close proximity to it. Vessels from
Central America bound to the ports of North America come, of course,
within the influence of our own coast. These circumstances, and the
existing recognized distribution of political power in the Pacific,
point naturally to an international acquiescence in certain defined
spheres of influence, for our own country and for others, such as has
been reached already between Great Britain, Germany, and Holland in the
Southwestern Pacific, to avoid conflict there between their respective
claims. Though artificial in form, such a recognition, in the case here
suggested, would depend upon perfectly natural as well as indisputable
conditions. The United States is by far the greatest, in numbers,
interests, and power, of the communities bordering upon the eastern
shores of the North Pacific; and the relations of the Hawaiian Islands
to her naturally would be, and actually are, more numerous and more
important than they can be to any other state. This is true, although,
unfortunately for the equally natural wishes of Great Britain and her
colonies, the direct routes from British Columbia to Eastern Australia
and New Zealand, which depend upon no building of a future canal, pass
as near the islands as those already mentioned. Such a fact, that this
additional great highway runs close to the group, both augments and
emphasizes their strategic importance; but it does not affect the
statement just made, that the interest of the United States in them
surpasses that of Great Britain, and dependent upon a natural cause,
nearness, which has been admitted always as a reasonable ground for
national self-assertion. It is unfortunate, doubtless, for the wishes
of British Columbia, and for the communications, commercial and
military, depending upon the Canadian Pacific Railway, that the United
States lies between them and the South Pacific, and is the state
nearest to Hawaii; but