Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/476

 462 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

was undoubtedly the animating cause of the expansive policy which found vent against Mexico in 1848.

The larger a compact territory grows, the simpler become its foreign relations, the smaller in proportion its periphery, and the greater its internal equilibrium. In this century the United States have pushed France, Spain, England (in the Oregon claim), Mexico, and Russia, one after the other, out of the present federal territory ; and even in such a narrow region as the San Juan de Fuca Strait they have simplified their situation. Con- sequently, in their internal development we find no conflict of different influences emanating from neighboring states. Even the various European influences, so diverse in their origin, unite on their way towards the west, like a backward flowing Gulf Stream, into one single current of European civilization. The United States compare themselves in point of civilization with only a single Europe, for they themselves form just as great a whole. For such a country the questions of its foreign policy are larger, more enduring, and simpler. Kriegk 1 is right when he says of Russia that for that country the foreign policy is more important than for any other state of Europe, with the exception of England ; but the cause of this lies not so much in the immense size of Russia as in the great multiplicity of its Euro- pean and Asiatic neighbors. In this regard, too, the United States have a decided advantage and for that reason form with- out doubt the most fortunate type of the " new country." They border on British Canada and Mexico; Russia, on Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria, Romania, Turkey, Persia, several small states of central Asia, China, and Corea something like twelve neighbors as compared with two.

But in spite of this important difference, for both of these countries the law holds good that the length of the frontier line becomes relatively smaller with the increase of political area. If larger states have in proportion shorter boundaries than small states, then they necessarily meet all external disturbances with a greater power of resistance. Consider how rapidly the wounds


 * G. C. KRIEGK, Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkundc, p. 213. 1840,