Commanding both sides of the Pacific, and the available coal-supplies on each, we command the ocean that, according to the old prediction, is to bear the bulk of the world's commerce in the Twentieth Century.
Whitelaw Reid
The Public Record
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, diplomat and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history.
gutenberg.org
Our remote but glorious land between the Sierras and the sea may then become as busy a hive as New England itself, and the whole continent must take fresh life from the generous blood of this natural and necessary commerce between people…
The faults in American character and life which the Little Americans tell us prove the people unfit for these duties are the very faults that will be cured by them.
Great responsibilities, suddenly devolved, must sober and elevate now, as they have always done in natures not originally bad, throughout the whole history of the world.
No nation stands higher in those new contributions to International Law which form the high-water mark of civilization from one generation to another.
The harm thus wrought to our national good name and the positive injury to our trade have been more than we realized.
We cannot escape realizing them now, and when the American people wake up to a wrong they are apt to right it.
Ward politics were banished from India and Egypt as the price of successful administration, and they must be excluded from Porto Rico and Luzon.
The practical common sense of the American people will soon see that any other course is disastrous.
Gigantic business interests must come to reinforce the theorists in favor of a reform that shall really elevate and purify the Civil Service.
Hand in hand with these benefits to ourselves, which it is the duty of public servants to secure, go benefits to our new wards and benefits to mankind.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.