be the highest genius of statesmanship.1 A navy was simply a useless expense, for the United States was safe from attack and it cherished no ambitious designs. It is characteristic of the American to blink facts when they are inconvenient and to delude himself into believing that what he wishes must be true. Americans imagined that again they were setting an example to all the world, and that it was possible for a nation to exist and cause itself to be respected without maintaining the means of defense; and they were more than satisfied when they were told that they were not heavily taxed, as were the people of Europe, to support great military establishments.

It was in Mr. Cleveland's first administration that the first keel of the modern navy was laid. The vessels of that day as compared with those of our own were small, insufficiently protected, and lightly gunned; the men who built them were without experience in the art of warship construction; they made many costly mistakes, as was natural, and the work was slow; but it was a beginning, and the ships they built were seaworthy. National vanity was appealed to, national consciousness was aroused. The American Navy that had been the target for sarcasm and attack had now acquired dignity, Americans felt that they had a weapon to

1 "The American habit is to proclaim doctrines and policies, without considering either the implications, the machinery necessary to carry them out, or the weight of the resulting responsibilities” — Croly: The Promise of American Life, p. 306.

rely on in case of need; having this weapon they began to think, not deliberately but through the influence of suggestion, how and when and under what circumstances they could bring this weapon into play. Every new keel that was laid down, every new ship that was launched, gave impetus to "Imperialism," and in exact proportion weakened the century-old traditions of political isolation and the belief in the virtue of continental aloofness. We no longer worship symbolism, but mankind is unconsciously influenced by the symbolic, which we have clothed in the modern terminology of science and talk of the objective. The navy was symbolic to the American of his strength and power; exciting his imagination it linked him to a world even greater than his own; with its constantly increasing growth and strength came a new generation on the scene to whom the old teachings and the old traditions were despicable and who gloried in the proof of their country's might.

From time to time events impressed upon the country the wisdom of a navy, routing those old fogeys who clung to their antiquated notions that ships and guns and men trained to fight were an invitation to disaster. The enforcement of the fiat of the United States in South America was possible. only because behind the diplomatic ultimatum were guns to carry destruction; a defiant message to the mistress of the seas was not to be treated entirely with contempt when there were ships to

make even a feeble defense; war with Spain would have been impossible but for the fact that the | American Navy outclassed that of Spain. Sea power has not only influenced history by winning battles, but it has so influenced the thoughts of a people as to make it possible for battles to be fought that made history.

Not only international and continental isolation was broken down by the war with Spain, but it ended sectionalism. It had been nearly forty years since certain men of the South cast off the blue of their country to don the gray of their newer allegiance and fight against the people of which they were once part. The men of the South, some of them the former chiefs of the Confederacy, were among the first to respond to the call to arms when danger threatened a reunited people, and this proof of devotion to the common weal made even the most bigoted admit that the South no longer cherished resentment or remained "rebel”at heart.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF THE TARIFF THE FARMER

In the tariff, which was partly a political and partly an economic measure, is to be found another of the causes that made the United States a selfcentred and politically detached country. Politically and economically, the American system threw around the United States a wall to shut it out from European invasion, and behind this wall the American lived in his security, but debarred from that freedom of commercial intercourse other countries had known, this self-imposed isolation engendering commercial jealousy, which is the basis of nearly all political hostility. As I frankly avow myself a believer in the principle of protection, though not in all the details of its administration, I shall not be accused of supporting the theory of unrestricted free trade when I say that the American tariff has done incalculable harm to the American character. It is as a psychological influence and not as an economic cause that I discuss the tariff.

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Behind his tariff wall the American felt himself secure from invasion so long as he kept his wall intact and the gates guarded, but feared always that an attack was planned. When he was compelled to

open his gates, he did so grudgingly and with suspicion, but he threw them wide with joyous shouting when they were to give passage to his commodities that Europe demanded, because Europe must have them or suffer inconvenience or starve. On the one hand, the American saw Europe clamoring for what America out of her bounty might sell; on the other, he saw Europe supplicating to be permitted to trade with him, and the wares Europe offered were not necessities to America, but things purely of luxury, or those articles which Europe made better or cheaper than America. The effect of the tariff, therefore, was to increase the general American belief that while Europe could not exist without America, America was independent of Europe; that the United States graciously conferred a favor when she generously sold her surplus cotton and corn so that the mills of Europe might continue to be operated and her workingmen fed. The cumulative result of this belief was to make men self-centred, complacent, extremely well satisfied with themselves and their own wisdom; proud of their country and its institutions, for corn and cotton and other things were not the whim of Nature but the proper reward of democracy, — and firmly to convince them that they were more successful because they were more superior, and that it would be folly to jeopardize their happiness or their prosperity by becoming entangled in the concerns of Europe or identifying themselves in