The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-07-17

Great Britain is most generous, most
just, most far-sighted in dealing with
sea1aring matters. That is why . Brl-
tannia rules the sea, even though in
the past blood be the price of ad-
miralty'' We have still something to
learn of the Mother Land, and among
other things, that freedom rather than
protection gives strength to indus
try, and most of all to those activities
which pertain to the sea. There would
be no more room for our merchantmen
if the rival warships of all rival ma
tions were banished from the Pacific.
Warships are the sea s police, and a
policeman in times of peace is no re
speeter of persons-he knows no differ
ences of nationality.
And this is the only justification of
the vast expenditure of money-of
your money and mine-which the great
white fleet represents. 1t makes for
peace among nations, it makes for
unity among men.
If the warships were the cause or oc-
casion of war, if the bigger the stick
the more frequently we should use 1t,
then away with the battleships. Ii
their coming to the Pacific means war
in the Pacific, as some gentle souls
about Boston have thought, then take
them away Let them rendezvous in
some other ocean, preferably the Arctic,
where their hot blood would cool and
where there would be no friendly nation
for them to seize by the throat.
But all this is nonsense. The ships
we love stand not for war, but for
peace, for peace equal, honorable, and
permanent with all nations of the earth.
IF they stand for peace, the great ocean,
the ocean along which most human be-
ings live, the ocean of the future, where
West meets East in friendly alliance,
needs more than its half of all the ships.
The Atlantic is a guarded boulevard,
where no unexpected event can happen.
The greater ocean has not yet made it's
conventions, not yet struck its social
gait. There is more play for surprise,
for folly, for violence, for mischance
among the very new people of the one
coast and the very old of the other.
Therefore our strenuous President, the
first since Jefferson to see both sides
of the Nation at once, would do well
never to take our ships away. At least
half of them belong to Washington, to
Oregon, to California, to Hawaii and
the Philippines.
1t is not that we fear attack from
Japan. The japanese war is made in
Europe, fantasy of the yellow news
papers of Paris, a nightmare of the pro-
fessional agitators of San Francisco and
Seattle. Japan is busy with other
she has to be so. It will
take a quarter century to recover from
the war with Russia, and her interests
lie with her nearer neighbors of China,
and Korea. She must de-
velop her internal affairs. She must
learn agriculture, and manufacture and
commerce. She must populate her
northern provinces. She must make the
most of Sakhalin and Hokkaido. She
must make her people strong, healthy,
self-reliant. She is too poor to quarrel
with us. She loves US too sincerely to
wish to do SO. Her strong men, edu
Gated by the thousand in America, have
too vivid a remembrance of American
to notice the rebuffs of the
sand-lot government of single sea-
board city. No people in San Fran
cisco will give a more hearty cheer to
the fleet than those who compose the
colony of Nippon. AS to Japanese i'm
the Japanese government
that no nation welcomes a
flood of low-class laborers from an
other, and the Japanese government
will respond to all our wishes if we ex-
press them nation to nation-as gen.
tleman to gentleman.
So the Great White Pageant is joy
to all of us in California. 1t marks the
increasing value of the Pacific Coast, it's
rising wealth, the growth of its man
hood and it's influence among men and
nations. Tt means that we have Pres
ident wise enough to plan all this,
broad minded. enough to regard both
coasts at a time, and mindful of the
fact that the best guarantee that we
shall never use warships is to have
them always ready to be used, their
navigators skilled, their gunners train
ed, and their decks always cleared for
action
And in the beginning of the TWEEN
tieth century it shall be written how
the great fleet sailed around the world
without mishap, nautical or POLITICAL
strengthening the bonds of peace and
adding one more cable-when so many
exist already-that shall hold the
States of America in one TndissoluhIe