Читать книгу The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Unification of the English-Speaking People - John R. Dos Passos - Страница 6

This war reveals the United States in many aspects as the leading power of the world. While her wonderful development, progress, and marvellous wealth were freely talked about and ungrudgingly acknowledged, she has, by this last war, leaped, per saltum, into a position among nations which will force her, nolens volens, to assume all the burdens and responsibilities which her new rank demands. If we look the actual situation in the face, it is impossible to escape the consequences of this dénouement. The United States has suddenly become a natural and necessary party to all great international questions; and this fact, with her increasing commercial and financial power, demands {4} that she should be ready to second the interests of her people, who are now spreading out in all directions in search of greater wealth and wider business relations. The oceans which separate the United States from Europe and the East were once supposed to be perpetual barriers to her active participation in international questions. It was assumed that she had quite enough to do, then and for all time to come, to attend to the development of her own vast and continuous country.

The victory of Dewey at Manila, however, combined with the mighty change which has been wrought in human affairs by science, electricity, and steam, struck the scales from the eyes of the world, and, presto! she has leaped into the arena of history as the most important factor of the new century. Can this situation be made other than it is by the shibboleth of party platforms, or individual opinion? Can her progress be stayed? With as much reason we may command the flowers and the trees not to grow—bid nature stand still, and her laws not operate!

She did not seek the rank of an international power; it was evolved out of a confluence of natural conditions. She can no more cast it off than can our bodies the food of which we have partaken after it has entered into our organisms. If history teaches any lesson, it is that nations, like individuals, follow the law of their being; that in their growth and in their decline they are creatures of conditions, in which even their own volition plays but a part, and that often the smallest part.

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