CHAPTER VII
THE WEST INDIES
The group of islands between Florida and South America are collectively designated, in common parlance, the West Indies. These islands are all directly within the proper sphere of American influence and not within the proper sphere of influence of Europe. In all these islands America has a most direct interest that they shall not be utilized as the future bases of hostilities directed against either North or South America. As the islands lie directly in the trade routes of the American hemisphere, it cannot be claimed with justice that either Europe or Asia has an equal commercial interest in them. American interests of all kinds in the West Indies are plainly paramount to the interests of all other powers. Consequently most of the larger islands in the West Indies have already passed under the control of America, and the rest in course of due time bid fair to follow.
Any examination of the personal interests of the West Indian Islands will disclose that economic influences prompt them to seek incorporation with America. In those of the islands which have already come under American domination the agricultural and other island resources quickly revived, whereas under European domination they languished or disappeared. In the process of extinguishing the proprietorship of Europe in the West Indies all the economic conditions are aiding America. The islands of the Atlantic stand in a peculiarly close relation to America. America has no colonial possessions on the mainland of Europe, Africa, and Asia, and it would be highly impolitic for her to accept any colonial jurisdiction in any part of Europe, Africa, or on the mainland of Asia. If territories in those quarters of the world were presented to her, it would be the act of the enemies rather than the act of the friends of America. In all the Americas and their adjacent seas lie all the best interests of America. The West Indies are directly within the American sphere of interest.
The islands of the Pacific other than those belonging to the great powers, including Japan, do not occupy the same relation to America as the Asiatic mainland. America has already acquired large and important island possessions in the Pacific, and her tenure of these is morally superior to that of any of the other great powers exclusive of China and Japan. As one of the leading countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean, America has the most direct concern in the islands of the Pacific. The economic interests of the rapidly developing portion of the United States lying west of the Rocky Mountains in the trade of the Pacific are already so extensive that the general Government cannot ignore them. The Pacific States of America would not long tolerate governmental indifference to their paramount interests. The trade and commerce of the Pacific are most important for the long future of the Western United States. The proximity of the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle to the Pacific Ocean tends to develop certain characteristics peculiar to all the Pacific. The trade intercourse between the Atlantic States of America and the West Indies creates a very close bond.
The facilities of intercourse between countries bordering on the same seas always create common interests in all the peoples of the seaboard districts. Their daily intercourse tends to produce a certain uniformity of temperament, manners, and culture in the populations of coast towns lying on the same seas without much regard to their respective nationalities. All the peoples living on the Mediterranean show marked similarities, and to acute observers they are distinguishable from their countrymen living remote from the Mediterranean. So the peoples living on the sea coast of the North Atlantic basin are much influenced by certain common forces not felt by their countrymen of the interior. The inhabitants of New York and Boston are, for instance, in closer touch with the thought and interests of London and Bordeaux than are the inhabitants of the cities in the middle States of America. It is obvious that the thought of London, New York, and Boston is greatly affected by common interests and by the facility of their intercourse by sea. Daily and hourly the ships come and go between them with peculiar messages for themselves only. In the great towns of middle America the thought of London or Bordeaux has little or no direct influence.
The immense mass and weight of America are already exercising an irresistible force in attracting the West Indies to it. As President John Adams said, "There are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation." This force is now almost irresistible in the West Indies. It has been sought in vain to counteract it by subsidies to the islands from European governments or by the special privileges called reciprocities. Notwithstanding these encouragements, the trade of the West Indies continues to seek its natural American channels. This invariable tendency of trade is observable even in the distant North Atlantic island of Bermuda, where the flag alone continues British, and this only because the flagstaff is of good English oak.
Except as coaling ports and dockyards the West Indies are now of very little importance to the European powers. From the economic point of view the West Indian Islands still retained by Europe are positively disadvantageous to Europeans, and their longer retention is prompted only by motives of ambition or sentiment. That the European powers could continue to hold their West Indian possessions during a war with America is unlikely. It would be an indication of friendliness on the part of Europe to follow the example of Denmark and cede all the West Indies to America. Their usefulness to Europe as coaling stations will cease with scientific changes in the nature of the methods of propulsion, and as dockyards their importance will decrease with the increasing radius of commercial vessels. Any necessary European user of the islands could be better provided for by stipulation in the acts of cession to the United States.
Owing to its fertility, its temperate climate, and the abundance of its food supply, the population of America is bound to increase with leaps and bounds after the war. The United States is more than half as large as China and Europe combined, and yet its continental population is only about a hundred millions at present. It will in time readily support and maintain more than seven hundred millions. That it is destined to be densely populated and highly developed is certain. When America is in the condition of Europe as regards density of population and internal development, the West Indies will belong exclusively to America. The Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico will be what they now are, the American Mediterranean, but with this difference: they will be, as they should be, exclusively under American domination.
In the general peace to follow the present World War the Entente statesmen could do much toward the better definition and limitation of the American spheres of influence in the West Indies. That they will not neglect this Americans feel confident, despite unofficial disclaimers that no advantage whatever for America is sought by the war. It would be detrimental to Americans if the public authorities should neglect the real interests of America at a time when the foreign powers are in the mood to make concessions of things of no value to them from any point of view. If the European powers attached any real value to their empty titles of sovereignty in the West Indies, the case would be different. The continuation of Europe in the West Indies can have no adequate moral foundation, while it is, and ought to be, displeasing to America.
By reason of the mere coöperation of America with England in the present Great War England's precarious tenure of her widely extended empire has already been assured for an indefinite period beyond her reasonable hopes. If England does not recognize this fact, her statesmen do, and it is her statesmen who control the immediate future of the British West Indies. That the peace negotiations could be made the means of transferring Jamaica and Nassau, for example, from England to America is not doubtful if English statesmen are willing to consent. They certainly will not consent if they are not asked by America to make the cession.
When America is as densely populated as its resources and situation promise, the now potential resources of the West Indies will not fail to be utilized on the mainland. With la petite culture, or intensive cultivation by small proprietors, the production of food in the West Indies may be made almost unlimited. Charles Kingsley, in his charming sketch of the West Indies, fifty years ago, pointed out that the same space of ground in the West Indies is capable of producing 133 times the amount of food producible in the wheat-growing areas of America. The food supply of a nation in the last analysis is the fundamental purpose of government. Without an abundance of food the progress of a nation is seriously hampered. Its limit of development is determined only by the limitation of its own natural food-giving areas. A nation dependent on another nation for food is at all times in a more or less dangerous position. That the United States will not in the end be indifferent to the food areas of the West Indies is certain.
The completion of the Panama Canal by the United States and the importance to America of keeping it open at all times for the coastwise commerce of the United States give a new strategic importance to the possession of the West Indies by the United States. In the possession of a European power the West Indian Islands are a menace to the peace of America. They can be retained by Europe only with some latent design hostile to America. In a war exclusively between European or Asiatic powers their custody has only some remote significance. The retention of the West Indies by Europe because it promotes its world commerce would justify its possession of the shores of all parts of the world. It is an argument the validity of which cannot be admitted in America. World commerce in the end must be regulated by a superior and binding law of nations and not by hostile and armed citadels seated in foreign countries or at points immediately adjacent to them.