Page 110 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

The Isthmus and Sea Power. 91

the coast of the republic of that name, and so
uniting, under the control of the great naval
power, the Belize to the Mosquito Coast. The
United States maintained that these islands,
then occupied by Great Britain, belonged in
full right to Honduras.
Under these de facto conditions of British
occupation, the United States negotiator, in
his eagerness to obtain the recession of the
disputed points to the Spanish-American re-
publics, seems to have paid too little regard
to future bearings of the subject. Men's minds
also were dominated then, as they are now
notwithstanding the intervening experience of
nearly half a century, by the maxims delivered
as a tradition by the founders of the republic
who deprecated annexations of territory abroad.
The upshot was that, in consideration of Great
Britain's withdrawal from Mosquitia and the
Bay Islands, to which, by our contention, she
had no right, and therefore really yielded noth-
ing but a dispute, we bound ourselves, as did
she, without term, to acquire no territory in
Central America, and to guarantee the neutral-
ity not only of the contemplated canal, but of
any other that might be constructed. A special