THE ARENA

VOL. XX, No. 4. OCTOBER, 1898. WHOLE NO. 107.

AMERICA AND THE EUROPEAN CONCERT.

BY FRANK E. ANDERSON.

W

HEN the United States were poor in money but rich in mind, their foreign creed was compressed into a domestic aphorism, profound in thought and polished in antithesis: "Friendly relations with all, but entangling alliances with none." At that time this policy was wise, for, less than three millions, scattered along the Atlantic, with hostile Indians hanging on our frontier, we were the sole republic in a hostile world of monarchies. North of us was England. South of us was Spain. Neither was our friend. Desperately poor, we earned our living from the soil and from the sea. We made some iron, but the cotton gin had just been born, and our woollen trade was taking its first step. Man had not yet stolen from heaven the lightnings and subdued them to his service. Our inland traffic jolted to death in the ruts of public roads or drowned in the floods of unsafe ferries. Our currency was a chaos of worn copper and depreciated paper, with no gold and next to no silver, and that struck at Spanish mints. But the struggle between France and Great Britain was shaking the continents. Here was our opportunity. Neutral and at peace, while the whole world was at

war, the carrying trade of Europe would be ours, which meant vast wealth; and wealth is power. Such was the dream of Thomas Jefferson.

Why should it not succeed? What to us was "the European concert," that satirical description of the eternal discord of the powers? Meeting its neighbors with a smile, each of these nations holds the assassin's knife behind its back, ready to use it upon all the others. Why should we meddle with this quarrel of the Montagues and Capulets? We had no possessions in Asia, no colonies in Africa, no dependencies in Oceanica. No despot ruled us with a rod of iron, scheming to increase the slaves over whom his son should reign. Why should we lie and call it "a polite evasion of the truth;" steal and call it "compensation" or "territorial expansion" or "spheres of influence;" kill and call it "pacifying subjects"? Let us keep aloof from a diplomacy which knows but one vice-weakness; and which recognizes but one virtue-strength. "Friendly relations with all, but entangling alliances with none."

A blind fate dogs the heels of Europe. There Apollo prophesies, but Cassandra speaks. Hence the history of that small continent is one huge blunder, which students recognize, but statesmen cannot see. The dust of conflict clouds the vision. In much of the story we, who are Americans, have but languid interest. Too powerful to experience fear, serene in the knowledge of our strength, and feeling that the future is our own, we bring to this blunder a critical analysis undimmed by apprehension. To us it appears incredible that Solomons of statecraft should urge the great republic from isolation into intervention. Yet such has been the case. As if the globe, contracted by lightning and by steam, had not already made of Washington a closer neighbor to Paris than New York was once to Brooklyn, they have shouldered into their arena the giant republic, whose existence is a constant menace to all monarchies. They have not allowed us to turn our back on their diplomacy. They should have known that, its imprisoning bounds once broken, the young eagle retires no more within its parent shell.

In 1815 three royal "Tailors of Tooley street" met to conspire at Paris: Alexander I, Tsar of Russia and mystic successor to a martyr; Francis II, Emperor of Austria, the dull betrayer of his brilliant son-in-law; and Frederick William III, King of Prussia, the husband of his wife. Partisans of the classes against the masses called the conspiracy, then and there cut out and stitched together, "the Holy Alliance." Doubtless it was so christened because of the startling piety of the three sovereigns, who had no need "to steal the livery of heaven to serve the devil in." One, a holy Greek; another, a virtuous son of Rome; and the third, a loving follower of Luther, the three tyrants called themselves "Christians." But why should they follow the Sermon on the Mount? The temptation on that other mountain was equally orthodox-and easier. They had forgotten the conclusion. "In the name of the Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity" they would treat each other as Christian brethren and govern their peoples on Christian principles, but-"render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's." Leg islation and administration must emanate only from the enlightened free-will of those whom God had rendered responsible for power. Singular, is it not, how every tyrant, if we take his word, has the Almighty as his silent partner?

How did the worthy three exercise those Christian principles? The freedom of the German press was stifled. Austrian bayonets stabbed to death the constitution of the patriots of Naples. Louis XVIII of France, valet to the Three Christian Brothers, "in the name of God and St. Louis," cast his army upon Spain and crushed the revolution there so that a fiend in the flesh, Ferdinand VII, might gorge himself with freedom's blood. And now it was proposed to reward this royal butcher with half a revolted hemisphere. South American sons of liberty were to be Spanish slaves once more.

But this Trinitarian decree of 1823 was vetoed. A solid statesman sat in the White House then. Men called him James Monroe. A brilliant thimblerigger was British Minister of Foreign Affairs. His name was George Canning. He had learned a lesson from the United States in the War of