Page 106 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

The Isthmus and Sea Power. 87

The chief political result of the Isthmian
Canal will be to bring our Pacific coast nearer,
not only to our Atlantic seaboard, but also to
the great navies of Europe. Therefore, while
the commercial gain, through an uninterrupted
water carriage, will be large, and is clearly in-
dicated by the acrimony with which a leading
journal, apparently in the interest of the great
transcontinental roads, has lately maintained
the singular assertion that water transit is
obsolete as compared with land carriage, it is
still true that the canal will present an element
of much weakness from the military point of
view. Except to those optimists whose robust
faith in the regeneration of human nature
rejects war as an impossible contingency, this
consideration must occasion serious thought
concerning the policy to be adopted by the
United States.
The subject, so far, has given rise only to
diplomatic arrangement and discussion, within
which it is permissible to hope it always may
be confined ; but the misunderstandings and
protracted disputes that followed the Clayton-
Bulwer Treaty, and the dissatisfaction with the
existing status that still obtains among many