Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1898-06-17

Ex-Judge Lambert Tree, Democrat
student of affairs and former minister
to Russia, Is outspoken in behalf OF an
overturning of the traditional "isola-
ton" policy of the United States. He
believes that Dewey's victory has
thrown into the hands of this country
an opportunity which should not be
overlooked to extend its commercial
and maritime power. Asked what he
considered were some of the more i'm
portant questions thus far suggested
by the war, Mr.. Tree said to Chicago
paper:
1.-The logic of the war which requires
the seizure of Manila and Puerto Rico
will be apt to bring the United States
face to face with new questions in re-
gard to the future policy which ought
to control the government in its inter-
national relations. 1t is easy to under
stand how the statesmen who were
guiding the steps of the republic in the
infancy of its experimental existence,
when it had scarcely three millions of
an army or navy, or the means of pro-
curing either, and whose chief inter-
est and ambition was to be let alone
to develop its own internal resources
and solidify its own federal system
of government, should strenuously in
sist upon its avoiding any line of ac-
ton which might by any possibility
bring 1t into contentious beyond the
continent on which it had established
itself. Most of the disputes between
nations at that period concerned dy-
nastic ambitions in which this country
could have no possible interest aside
from the fact that our feebleness as
power of the world admonished us
to keep clear Of them, whatever might
be their purpose.
America Past It's Babyhood.
"But times have changed consider
ably now. We have passed the
period of babyhood as a nation and
find ourselves grown to be great com
mercial power with population of
more than seventy millions, engaged
in all the pursuits incident to a pro-
gressive and aggressive people. Our
manifold interests reach out and touch
every portion of the inhabited globe.
The rules laid down for the guidance
of the sparsely settled, little expert
mental republic of hundred years ago
in its international relations scarcely
fit the powerful nation of today, and
strict adhesion to them seems near
to being fetish worship. Whatever ar
guments may be advanced by those
who look with apprehension upon the
establishment of new outposts by the
United States in order to secure their
share of the worlds commerce, it will
be found in the end that the country
will be compelled to obey the laws of
its destiny as great commercial and
maritime power. If not today, then
tomorrow. China, with her four hun
bred millions of people and vast re-
sources, is soon to be awakened from
her slumbers of centuries. Railways
will penetrate the heart of the empire
to engage in trade with her. The
United States, whose western frontier
is bordered by the same ocean which
washes China's shores, and whose ships
sail directly out of cur ports into
China's, must have an equal chance
to share in Chinas trade with European
nations, whose shores know no other
ocean than the faraway Atlantic.
Even now the trade Of this country
through the open treaty ports of China
Is many millions of dollars greater
than that of the combined countries
OF continental Europe, and is only ex-
ceeded by that of Great Britain. The
vessels also which navigate Chinese
waters and fly the American flag out
number by thousands those Of all Eu-
rope, Great Britain excepted. Yet we
have recently seen inaugurated move
ment by certain continental powers by