In  Venezuela,  in  Cuba,  in  China  and  in  Manchuria  she
has  stood  and  is  standing  courageously,  consistently  and
firmly  for  liberty  of  natural  growth :  the  one  world-power
most  effective  as  to  actual  result,  no  matter  what  might
be  the  outcome  of  supposititious  war,  of  all  the  scheming
others.  Within  the  last  six  years,  in  spite  of  inevitable
mistakes,  she  has  made  not  only  a  new  Cuba  and  a  new
Philippines,  but  a  new  Spain  and  a  new  Pacific.  Within
twenty-five  years  she  has  helped  to  make  a  new  Japan, —
a  Japan  which  has  challenged  the  admiration  of  the
occidental  world  by  the  marvelous  success  attending  its
adoption  of  western  science,  coupled  with  a  patriotism
too  pure  to  copy  western  commercial  examples,  a
Japan  which  already  suggests  what  America  may  be  when
its  commercialism  is  eliminated  by  the  abolition  of  barter.
There  are  even  now  indications  that  she  may  have  been
able  to  preserve  old  China  and  to  effect  a  new  Russia,
— a  Russia  soon  to  be  equipped  with  a  constitutional  gov-
ernment born  of  wholesome  failure  without  and  within  and
now  for  the  first  time  really  started  toward  an  honorable,
healthy  prosperity.^  Situated  as  is  the  United  States,
topographically  and  ethnographically  the  center  of  the
West,  facing  Occident  and  Orient  on  either  hand,  com-
pounded in  her  blood  from  Latin,  Teuton  and  Celtic  races,
no  single  flag  covers  anything  like  the  infinity  of  possibility
for  development  of  national  self  and  for  peaceful,  benef-
icent   influence    over    her    independent    and    dependent

"Written  in  the  summer  of  1903.
ETHICAL    SYNTHESIS  6oi

neighbors  as  does  our  own.  No  flag  represents  anything
like  our  possible  unity  of  purpose  to  accomplish  this
thing.
