The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-06-21
EXPANSION MEANS CONQUEST.

The policy of expansion for the
| United States, of which the people are
hearing more and more each day and
which is destined to become a politi-
cal question, simply means a policy of
acquisition of territory not now be-
longing to this government; it means
that and nothing else, no matter for
what purpose the territory may be
acquired.
There are only five methods of terri
torial expansion. They are:
1.-The discovery of new countries.
2.-The appropriation of countries al
ages.
BY annexation, the people of the
country annexed and those of the
country to which it is annexed mutu-
ally agreeing upon the terms by which
the one country becomes Incorporated
in another.
4.-By purchase.
By conquest.
If the United States are going to
embark on a policy of expansion these
are the methods that will have to be
pursued.
The first is out of the question and
has been for a hundred years. Cap
tain Gray's voyage in the. Columbia
being about the last instance of the
acquisition of territory by discovery,
though he was not a discoverer in the
sense that Columbus and the Cabots
were.
e f,;r
establishment of spheres of influence
there was about. if not quite, the last
chance to acquire territory. under the
second method. Australasia was once a
very fertile field for this work, but it
has been thoroughly exploited in this
direction, the establishment Of a Ger
man sphere of influence in New Guinea
being the last opportunity to invoke
it,
The third method holds out some
hope. BY it Hawaii win be acquired.
BY the fourth method the islands of
St Thomas, st. John and Green
land might be acquired, though
in the case of the latter the
trade is a state monopoly and Den
mark might not care to dispose of it,
though there is little doubt that she
would dispose of her West Indian pos
sessions.
There remains the fifth method, that
Of acquisition by conquest. 1t is al
ways available, and is the truly i'm
perialistic one. 1t was the one that
Alexander of Macedon used with such
pronounced success; it was the method
of the Roman consuls and later of the
Roman emperors. So successfully did
they employ it that their empire be-
came greater than that Of Alexander,
While they left the impress of their in
stitutions upon all the nations of
modern Europe. So successfully did
they colonize that the colonies over
whelmed the mother country and Rome
was no more. In modern times Ma
poIeon was the great expounder of the
theory of territorial expansion by con-
quest, but his work did not outlast
him. Germany invoked this method
of territorial acquisition in 1871.
The policy of expansion by the
United States, if, it is to amount to
anything, if the country is to realize
it's manifest destiny" must be by the
fifth method, the method of Rome.
This must be so because there is
practically no other method left. If
the policy of isolation is to give way
to the policy of expansion" there
must be conquest, and conquest means
war, for the earth hunger having
seized upon the nation the Spanish
colonial possessions will be no more
substantial and satisfying than cafe
au lait; there must be dinner with
fork, lots of. forks.
The advocate of a policy of expan-
sion do not mean a limited expansion;
they mean an unlimited and continuous
expansion. and nothing else. Under
the conditions existing in the world to-
day a policy of territorial expansion
means territorial conquest.