Page 204 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

Preparedness for Naval War. 185

concessions which she cannot base upon the
substantial justice of her demands. But, while
this is true, the United States has had in the
past abundant experience of disputes, in which,
though she believed herself right, even to the
point of having a just casus belli, the other
party has not seemed to share the same con-
viction. These difficulties, chiefly, though
not solely, territorial in character, have been
the natural bequest of the colonial condition
through which this hemisphere passed on its
way to its present political status. Her own
view of right, even when conceded in the end,
has not approved itself at first to the other
party to the dispute. Fortunately these differ-
ences have been mainly with Great Britain,
the great and beneficent colonizer, a state be-
tween which and ourselves a sympathy, deeper
than both parties have been ready always to
admit, has continued to exist, because founded
upon common fundamental ideas of law and
justice. Of this the happy termination of the
Venezuelan question is the most recent but
not the only instance.
It is sometimes said that Great Britain is the
most unpopular state in Europe. If this be so,