Or shall the historian record that at this unexampled crisis they were controlled by timid ideas and short-sighted views, and so proved unequal to the duty and the opportunity which unforeseen circumstances brought to their doors?
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
The greatest ocean on the globe has been put in our hands, the ocean that is to bear the commerce of the Twentieth Century.
Hill, was right when he said that not to enter the Open Door in Asia means the perpetual isolation of this continent.
Not while we remember how often and under what circumstances we have heard that cry before.
Because, while we have lost the trade of the Atlantic, superior advantages make the Pacific ours.
Yet none of them bought as much salmon in San Francisco as Hawaii, and no countries bought more save England and Australia.
No countries bought as much barley, excepting Central America; and even in the staff of life, the California flour, which all the world buys, only five countries outranked Hawaii in purchases in San Francisco.
Nevertheless, nobody doubts the advantage our dealers have derived in the promotion of trade from controlling political relations and frequent intercourse.
And, independent of these advantages, and reckoning by mere distance, we still have the better of any European rivals in the Philippines.
Roughly cast up even that result, and say whether it is a value which the United States should throw away as not worth considering!
For the trade in the Philippines will be but a drop in the bucket compared to that of China, for which they give us an unapproachable foothold.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.