Page 105 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

86 The Isthmus and Sea Power.

Australia, — Liverpool, in this case, using the
Suez Canal, and New York that of Nicaragua.
In short, the line of equidistance would be
shifted from the eastern shore of the Pacific to
its western coast, and all points of that ocean
east of Japan, China, and Australia— for ex-
ample, the Hawaiian Islands — would be nearer
to New York than to Liverpool.
A recent British writer has calculated that
about one-eighth of the existing trade of the
British Islands would be affected unfavorably by
the competition thus introduced. But this re-
sult, though a matter of national concern, is
political only in so far as commercial prosperity
or adversity modifies a nation's current history
;
that is, indirectly. The principal questions
affecting the integrity or security of the British
Empire are not involved seriously, for almost
all of its component parts lie within the
regions whose mutual bond of union and short-
est line of approach are the Suez Canal. No-
where has Great Britain so little territory at
stake, nowhere has she such scanty posses-
sions, as in the eastern Pacific, upon whose
relations to the world at large, and to ourselves
in particular, the Isthmian Canal will exert
the greatest influence.