The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1898-07-06
Little America VS.. Expansive America.

Writing on the current matter of
largest public interest, Judge Peter S.
Grosscup, of the United States district
court thus expresses his views in the
Chicago Tribune:
ga few facts, commonly understood,
should preliminarily be recalled. The
first is that America and Europe, with
the ~latter's colonial dependencies on
other continents, dominate to-day the
moral purposes and the trade of the
world. This domination is not a di-
minishing one. n The Latin race,
though still preeminent in many fields,
is a diminishing race; the Anglo-Saxon,
preeminent in all the arts and ambi-
tons hat make this age powerful, is
an increasing race. 1t is the only race
that has, since the beginning of time,
correctly conceived the individual
rights of men, and is, on that account,
more than anything else, surviving, by
fitness, the other races.
"The next fact is that events fore
shadow, with certainty, the breaking
up of Asia. The first quarter of the
twentieth century will probably break
up those hitherto stagnant peoples and
throw them into a modern atmosphere,
and will undoubtedly cleanse and ad-
vance them as only a clean, wholesome
civilization can. Into this field the
moral purposes and commercial cour-
age of the Anglo-Saxon are bound to
project themselves. They are of the
inevitable movements of mankind
which d%octrinarians and statesmen can
not, if they would, hold back. Neither
the trading instinct nor the conscience
of mankind is result of statecraft; they
are irresistible forces. Craftsmanship
is impotent to do more than to measur-
ably encourage and fortify them or dis
courage and repress them. Expansive
America means a placing Of all our ad-
vantages, physical and sentimental, on
the side of the encouragement of our
commercial and moral purposes; re-
pressive America means the purposed
and stubborn withholding of such ad-
vantages.
"The policy in favor of little Ameri-
ca would plant our harbors with tor
pedoes and mines,and place across their
entrances our war-ships, and there
stop. Trade might go on with her
fleets of merchantmen, for that could
not be helped, but the Government
would furnish her ne succor on the
seas and no home ports away from our
shores. Our emblem under such a
policy ought to be the mud-turtle,
reaching out its head and arms in fair
weather and when enemies are absent,
but drawing back into its shell, signless
of powers of aggression, in the pres
ence of danger.
Expansive America, on the con-
trary, would put in every port of the
world a consulate on a front street and
conspiciously housed. The flag cover
ing our trade and our principles would
beckon, not stink. The existence of
this republic and what she stands for
commercially and morally would be
be constantly brought, by emblem and
by act, to the %populace, as well as to
the foreign minister. Half of the popu-
lation of the earth is about to become
new purchasers in the markets of civili-
cation. Are we willing to absent our
selves from these markets? \ .
"Wha we need in these foreign
waters is home ports already fortified
against attacks from land as well as
from sea, into which our merchant
marine can al a moments notice 60 for