The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-08-12

What the Spectator Thinks Should be
Done by the United States.
dondon Spectatcr.)

(Iondon Spectatcr)
The future Of the world will depend
greatly upon the political character OF
Americans. When in 1850 they are two
hundred millions, and have absorbed
as n will absorb, the swarms OF
immigrants whose presence now makes
continentals~ doubt-except just after a
great sea fght-whether Americans
are Englishmen, their purposes, their
ideas, their will will be to all mankind
q matter of the gravest moment. They
will be able if much stirred to crush
any single people except perhaps the
Slavs.
To fit the Americans for that destiny
the first necessity is that they should
before they are irresistible, have diff
culties, dependencies, complicated and
urgent delations with the remainder
of mankind. At present everything is
too easy to them, and they live too
much to themselves, comparing them
selves with themselves" as he scrip
ture has it, till they. have no idea OF
EQUALS, and see their own powers as
rights through one medium, and their
rivals through another. They thought,
not out of boastfulness, but pure in
experience, that they could crush Spain
and liberate Cuba in a fortnight They
are a people devoted to legal logic, but
we never yet met an American who
COOlO Scc lAd IL %HO AL NoNt AK
is not to be a pure oppression to the
world outside the Americans, it must
carry with it an obligation to control
the external action of the states who
live under its protection and its
shadows.
The Spanish war will teach them
much, but to be fit for their great work
Americans must learn how to govern
as we'll as how to be governed; must
add to their splendid patriotism the
English gift of cold and lofty toler-
ance; must learn how to keep subor-
mate governments as clean or corrup-
ton as their supreme court is; must
above all, learn lessons none have yet
learned except the English, how to
keep dark races subject while they are
being educated without incessant men,
aces of force. They have to create a
great fleet, yet confine its action to
police work; they have to enlist a
great army, yet preserve their own lib
critics fully; they have to maintain a
civil service which can administer sue
cessfully yet remain all the time sub
missive to the will of the toilers who
pay for all. They have, in fact, to
exchange their role Of prosperity for
a role of greatness among mankind.
1t is coming to them with tremen-
dous rapidity-lOok at the relations
between Admiral Dewey and Admiral
DlelS Tx III NS III
a dim way becoming conscious Of the
great change that is passing over their
polity, but they still need experience.
Men do not learn self-restraint in a
week, nor can great administrators be
continually produced without a train
ing of two generations. 1t is the habit
of self-restraint which America, with
her terrible strength, will in the end
| most urgently need; n she can ac-
quire it only by use, by finding in the
habitual government of mankind how
easy it is to turn a wheel (which sets
sharp knives at work to pinch and
peel" They have to learn honesty, too,
in a new fOrm-the power, when the
public veal is concerned, if not even
wishing to make personal profit, of re-
garding a fee for the concession Of a
contract as something which it is i'm
possible to take as it is to steal a
friends spoon or pawn a fiance's en-
gagement ring. There are virtues, intel
lectual as we'll as moral, which do not
blossom freely when there is no one
to think of but oneself, no one to con-
ciliate, no one to train so that ne may
not hate the trainer as Mexicans, Pc
ruvians, Taga1s an d country-bOrns
have through the las hundred years
hated the Spaniards. You mo train
great men if their whole live are to be
one long p~rotracted good time;" and
it is because Americans will need great
politicians, great diplomatists, great
administrators, that we desire to see
them come out of themselves and take
up their share Of the worlds govern
ing work.