The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1898-05-25
POLITICAL.
Missionary Nations,

gave articulate expression TO the
thought of England's being overbur-
dened with the cares of empire. 10
an eager, restless, colonizing people,
ever seeking new territories, ever en-
larging its sphere of influence, his
"weary Titan,"
Bearing on shoulders immense
Atlantean, the load,
Well nigh not to be borne,
or the too vast orb OF her fate,
seemed to be an unbound giant, to
whose strength none but the magma
tive could see limit. But the poets
vision has become the statesman's
truth, and to-day we find English pub
lie men frankly oppressed with the
sense that their share of the worlds
work for civilization is almost beyond
their powers. They see that they can
not undertake to enlighten all its dark
continents. They excite already the
envy of other nations who look at do
minion from q purely selfish point of
view, and the problems OF government
in 30 vast an empire are so numerous
and complex as to overtax the strong
est and most active minds. Therefore
Englishmen are urging us to realize
what fate has before us, to accept re-
probabilities, and as first step to hold
the Philippines, for they think, as the
London Spectator puts it, that cit
would be a relief if another English
speaking Power would take up por-
ton of our task, and, in taking it, per-
form the duty of repaying something
to the world which yields her such adj
vantages."
Why should we not respond to such
an invitation? Much has been given
us, we have been richly blessed; shall
we bury our talent in our own garden
patch? Perhaps we may not find it
best to keep the Philippines, but that
need not prevent us from thinking of
our opportunity and duty as mission
airy power. We have gone on develop
ing our own territory, becoming rich
and comfortable, until we may well ask
why we were put in this blessed land
was it that we might become workers
for the less fortunate and less enlight-
ened, or was it that we might Craze
and grow fat? No people has ever
been heir to fortune like that of the
Americans, unless it was the Spaniards
on whom it was wasted. A vigin soil,
untold wealth, space for growth, free
dom from external cares, gave us the
supreme chance of history to build
nation of vast power and high civiliza-
ton, untrammelled by the quarrels,
the overcrowding, the popular poverty
and the lettering traditions of the Old
World. We have been like a child
growing up to manhood free from the
responsibilities of life, and there comes
a time when we must assume them.
Our government is not perfect, we have
national defects of character, but most
of those defects are the result of our
freedom from responsibility. just as
our people are extravagant in their liv-
ing and wasteful of their wealth of
land and forest because they have had
such natural abundance as not to have
learned the need of economy, so we
permit corruption in government and
have got on we'll enough without cor
recting those evils.
Are we boastful? 1t is because our
strength has not been tried enough TO
make us modest. Do we lack expert
talent in administration? Our problems
have not been so difficult but that we
solved them without it. We have the
latent ability and moral force for the
highest development of governmental
and diplomatic science, for the refine
ment of our crudeness, for the reform
of our social and political abuses.
What we need are the trials and the
strains, not of external conflict, but of
external responsibility and of unselfsh
cares, to teach the necessity of setting
the National house in order to people
who tolerate defects to which they are
not blind, because so far it has seemed
that they could afford to tolerate them.
England learned to govern her colonies
only after losing the United States and
after long experiment in Canada. Her
splendid civil service was due to reali
cation that the universal purchase of
office, both civil and military, must give
way to the imperative necessity for adj
ministration adequate to growing diff
culties. We ourselves, as never be-
fore, understand the need of trained
soldiers, expert financial advisers and
learned diplomatists, simply because as
never before we see what mistakes we
have made and may make without
them. With nations, as with men,
necessity is the mother of invention.
If we lack form, it is because we have
never been disciplined. If we have
not made the best of our powers, it is
because our best has never been requir-
ed.
Nobody can doubt that England has
been the missionary of civilization,
and that in taking our part in her tasks
we should be "repaying something to
the world" for our blessings. The
Continental politicians may call the
English talk of duty to the dark races
hypocrisy, but no man who looks at
English rule in Egypt and India, who
compares English with French, Ger
man and Russian colonizing, can doubt
that with the English flag have gone
blessings never known before by the
barbarians over whom it floats, such as
no other flag could have brought them.
Whether we are to have "far. flung
battle line" or, keeping close at home,
are to exercise only moral influence
on the rest of the world, as our ideals
of liberty, our promptings of duty, our
standards of humanity are those OF
England, we may well give friendly