Page 279 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

260 A Twentieth-Century Outlook.

Atlantic to the Pacific more rapidly than
modern steamers can cross the former ocean,
but for the vast amounts in numbers or in
quantity which are required for the full fruition
of communication, it is the land that divides,
and not the sea. On the Pacific coast, severed
from their brethren by desert and mountain
range, are found the outposts, the exposed pio-
neers of European civilization, whom it is one
of the first duties of the European family to
bind more closely to the main body, and to
protect, by due foresight over the approaches
to them on either side.
It is in this political fact, and not in the
weighing of merely commercial advantages,
that is to be found the great significance of the
future canal across the Central American isth-
mus, as well as the importance of the Carib-
bean Sea; for the latter is inseparably intwined
with all international consideration of the isth-
mus problem. Wherever situated, whether at
Panama or at Nicaragua, the fundamental
meaning of the canal will be that it advances
by thousands of miles the frontiers of European
civilization in general, and of the United States
in particular; that it knits together the whole