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Show AMERICA 11 THE WORLD1 THE OUTLOOK'S REVIEW OF AMERICA'S NEW INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS We Must Go Forward or Backward "We Must Accept Our Share of the Responsibility of Living in the World and Dealing Freely With the Race in the Great Fellowship of Humanity It Is Time to Cast Aside Provincialism. The emergence of China from her old seclusion into the general movement of the modern world has been advanced ad-vanced so rapidly by recent events that it has deeply impressed the imagination ima-gination of men of every race, who are not slow to recognize that it is a pivotal event iu history, and marks the opening open-ing of a new era in the development of humanity. There is another event, however, not yet so clearly recognized but even more significant of movement and change; the emergence of the United States from its seclusion into the world-wide movement of modern life. For, in a certain sense, this country coun-try has been as much detached and isolated as China. There has been no material wall about our territory; the country has been opeu to the whole world; there has been the freest exchange ex-change of books, ideas, knowledge; Europe has inlluenced us deeply and we have influenced Europe deeply; and yet we have gathered our skirts about us, and, sharing the profits of worldwide world-wide civilization, have refused to bear its burdens or accept its responsibilities. responsibili-ties. We have preached the brotherhood brother-hood of nations aud gotten gain out of it, but we have declined to pay for it. We have sent our commerce into the most remote oceans and carried on traffic with the farthest East, but we let other countries bear the burden of establishing and maintaining the order of which we have freely taken advantage. ad-vantage. We have treated Europe as if it were consumed with greed of territory ter-ritory and lusting for power, and at the same time .we have made the most of the opportunities which Europe has created for travel and trade. This seclusion was necessary for our growth as a nation; for we have not been a nation until within the last two decades. It was necessary for the settlement set-tlement of a new continent, the organization organi-zation of a new society, and the clear and definite realization, by the people at large, of the principles for which we stand and the deep and vital tendencies tenden-cies which, in a true sense, are making our destiny. For destiny is not, as some critics of recent movements have tried to make us believe, a passive acceptance accept-ance of external conditions as the determining de-termining elements in national life; it is the shaping of events and the setting in motion of tidal influences by the working out of racial character. The only "manifest destiny" for the American Ameri-can people is to be found in the energy, the. inventiveness, the faith in man, and the confidence in his ability to better his condition, w hich lie deep in the character of the American people. We have passed into an era of expansion, expan-sion, not because we have been driven on by blind fate, but because we have been driven on by an inward force the force which has made men of our race, discovererers, explorers, settlers, organizers, leaders, administrators, reformers, re-formers, and artists for many centuries. cen-turies. The victory of Manila was not a cause; it was an occasion. It did not abruptly and blindly open a new chapter chap-ter in our history; it threw a sudden light on a situation for which we had been long preparing, but which we had not clearly recognized. Nations, like men, depend on events for opportunities oppor-tunities of showing what is in them; but events are of importance, not for what they create, but for what they reveal. a respectable people ever settle a question ques-tion of duty by a nice calculation of expense, or decide the questiorrof accepting ac-cepting a new responsibility by a consideration con-sideration of the risks involved? Brave men do not barter with duty nor trade with responsibilities. This country has a work to do in the modern world which it cannot escape, and ought to rejoice in accepting as its service to humanity. The perils which nnty face it through greater intimacy with the older nations are small compared with the perils of detachment and isolation which have been steadily growiug during dur-ing the last two decades. Nothing could be more disastrous for the higher civilization civ-ilization in this country in the long run than the feeling that we have no common com-mon cause with the older nations; that we are committed to permanent antagonism an-tagonism to the other peoples who make up our race; that, the history of the past has no lessous in government or finance for us to learn; that we are powerful enough to set the laws of trade at defiance; that we can, at our will, make all things new. This provincial pro-vincial feeling, this fostering of old antagonisms which can survive only in a soil of ignorance, this self-suf-ficiant exploitation of our achievements achieve-ments and character, this rank growth of a feeliug of superiority to other peoples, peo-ples, this continual declamation about liberty while the country is stained from end to end with lawnessness these are signs of the partial development, develop-ment, the unhealthy egotism, the indifference in-difference to larger relationships which grow readily in isolation and detachment. detach-ment. We are members of the great family of nations, to all of which we are deeply deep-ly indebted for knowledge, truth, political poli-tical experience, and service of many kiuds; we have been more fortunate in our conditions than many of these older peoples, but we are not a whit better; aud we h.ave still much to do before we can claim equality with them in magnitude and quality of service ser-vice to the spiritual development of the race. We need their help and they need ours. We are commanded by our opportunities which are the voice of God to take up new burdens and enter upon a newer and a greater life. Those who hold back and cry out that the "ways of the fathers" are being forsaken see neither thelr-own time nor the times of the fathers. The fathers saw the open door in their own day and passed through it, breaking with the past as they did so facing all manner man-ner of peril and incurring every kind of cost. They were accused by good and well meaning contemporaries of being revolutionists and demagogues; "popular demagogues," wrote one of the critics of the men in Massachusetts who urged independence on the American Ameri-can colonists, "always call themselves 'the people;' he that would excite ex-cite a rebellion, whatever professions of philanthropy he may make when he is insinuating and worming himself into the good graces of the people, is at heart as great a tyrant as ever wielded the iron rod of oppression." The fathers who gave tne American State a chance to be did not stop because be-cause of perils and costs, and their children cannot afford to be less brave. The fathers were not seeking for power and self-aggrandizement; their children are not "imperialists" bent on conquest and slaughter. They recognize that a new age has dawned, and in the American Ameri-can spirit and In absolute loyalty to American principles, they propose to meet its duties and responsibilities with the courage of thse who believe that America ought to live with the world and not remain shut up in her own. private grounds, however spacious; spa-cious; that she has before her a great opportunity for which she has been preparing herself, and that her supreme su-preme sin now would be the "unlit lamp and the ungrit loin." The Out-jlook, Out-jlook, Sept. 15. Our seclusion on this side the globe and our long absorption in our own affairs furnished the conditions which our education as a nation required; but that process has now ended; we shall not cease to learn, but we have entered en-tered a higher school. Our period of apprenticeship is over; we are now called upon to show of what stuff we are made, and how far we have mastered mas-tered the science of government, of social order and of national development. develop-ment. It matters not that ws have a hundred problems of our own still unsolved: a man does not keep out of public affairs because he has private and personal matters which perplex and oppress him. Public and private duties are not only indissolubly bound together, so that no brave and conscientious con-scientious man can separate them, but, where they are met seriously and intelligently, in-telligently, they disclose unsuspected points of contact; and the doing of one set of duties equips a man for the doing of another set. If we waited until outwork out-work was done and our lives brought into final harmony before assuming new responsibilities, we should not only turn cowards, but we should miss the best education which life offers us. There is now a clear alternative before be-fore us; either we must take up our share of the responsibilities of keeping the modern world in order, or we must cease to profit by what nations are doing In tniB direction. We canm honorably any longer take the profits and refuse to pay our share of the expenses. We cannot share in the gain of a great partnership and evade the expenses. We must either call our ships home, refuse to permit American capital and American energy to assist In the development of undeveloped countries, send for our missionaries and close our churches and schools, in semi-civilized or barbarous countries, refuse to allow our books to be translated trans-lated into Chinese, and rigidly limit ourselves to our own territory in trade, religion, science, art, education, and philanthropy; or we must accept our share of the responsibility of living in the world and dealing freely with the race in the great fellowship of humanity. human-ity. To take our share of the work of the world and bear our share of its burdens will involve dangers and entail expense; but when did a decent man or |