Problems of the Pacific

The Pacific is the ocean of the future. As civilisation grows and distances dwindle, man demands a larger and yet larger stage for the fighting-out of the ambitions of races. The Mediterranean sufficed for the settlement of the issues between the Turks and the Christians, between the Romans and the Carthaginians, between the Greeks and the Persians, and who knows what other remote and unrecorded struggles of the older peoples of its littoral. Then the world became too great to be kept in by the Pillars of Hercules, and Fleets—in the service alike of peace and war—ranged over the Atlantic. The Mediterranean lost its paramount importance, and dominance of the Atlantic became the test of world supremacy. Now greater issues and greater peoples demand an even greater stage. On the bosom of the Pacific will be decided, in peace or in war, the next great struggle of civilisation, which will give as its prize the supremacy of the world. Shall it go to the White Race or the Yellow Race? If to the White Race, will it be under the British Flag, or the flag of the United States, or of some other nation? That is the problem of the Pacific.