Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/222

198 is in the hands of a European power that may, under certain circumstances, become hostile to us. It is only a few miles from the coast of Florida. It “threatens” that coast. It “commands” also the Gulf of Mexico, with the mouths of the Mississippi and the Caribbean Sea. Its population is discontented; it wishes to cut loose from Spain and join us. If we do not take Cuba “some other power will take it.” That power may be hostile. Let us take it ourselves. What then? Santo Domingo is only a few miles distant from Cuba; also a country of rich resources; other powers several times tried to get it; if in the hands of a hostile power it would “threaten” Cuba; it also “commands” the Caribbean Sea; the Dominican Republic, occupying the larger part of the island, offered to join us once, and will wish to do so again; to acquire the Haitian Republic we shall have to fight; it will cost men and money, but we can easily beat the negroes. We must have Santo Domingo. Puerto Rico will come as a matter of course with Cuba. The British possession of Jamaica will still be there to “threaten” and “command” everything else. It will be difficult to get it and the other little islands from the clutch of the British lion. Thus all the more necessary will it be to have possession of the mainland bordering and “commanding” the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea on the western side. We must have all the “keys” to the seas and to the land, or at least as many as we can possibly get, one to protect another. In fact, when once well launched on this course we shall hardly find a stopping-place north of the Gulf of Darien; and we shall have an abundance of reasons, one as good as another, for not stopping even there.

Let us admit, for argument's sake, that there is something dazzling in the conception of a great republic embracing the whole continent and the adjacent islands, and that the tropical part of it would open many tempting