Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/190

 and the rest, there may follow—incidents. We may find it necessary to go down and take these countries over—as a means of defending Americans and American capital abroad. Why not? Is not our civilization better than that of Mexico and Guatemala? Will not the inhabitants be higher and better if we take over their responsibilities and make them Americans?

Canada lies to our North; very rich in resources, less developed than we are; inhabited by people with the same language as ours, of very much the same habits of thought. When we have the dominant navy, perhaps the British Empire may break up; perhaps Canada may wish to throw in her lot with us, either as a member of our Confederation or as a close ally. Wrest of us lies the Pacific; with our dominant fleet, we may make it an American lake.

What national greatness, what glory! “Dominion over palm and pine”—why, we shall hold dominion over Arctic tundra and tropical jungle. No empire, whether it be Rome of the second century or Spain of the sixteenth or Great Britain of the nineteenth, ever held complete, undisputed mastery of its own continent. But we shall. The old Spain of the Philips called the Mediterranean “Mare Nostrum”—our sea—the little Mediterranean! Our sea will be the Pacific, mightiest of all oceans. With what a thrill may the schoolboy of 1950