TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW TASK OF AMBASSADORS.
THE nations are wild to enrich themselves, and diplo- macy and legislation are both subordinated to con- siderations of trade. That is the keynote of the present situation all over the world, and whether the music which is to follow will enliven or sadden mankind is becoming the gravest of questions. We received on Wednesday two documents both of great moment—one President Roosevelt's " Message " to Congress, and the other a report of a speech made by Sir E. Monson, our able and successful Ambassador in Paris, to the Chamber of Com- merce—and in both the tale is the same. The President, it is true, tells us of some things in the region of higher politics—that he is still intending to cut the great canal of the future through Panama; that while effectively maintaining the Monroe doctrine, he -will not shelter weaker States in wrongdoing ; that the American Navy must be steadily increased until it is adequate to defend the new and great position of the Union in the world, especially on both sides of that canal—but his topics of immediate interest, his sentences which are quoted every- where, are those which refer to the means that will ensure or injure the prosperity of his country. He speaks of the Tariff, announcing himself, as usual, a devoted Protec- tionist who yet sees that Protection may be abused and must be regulated, and all over the world the traders are pondering his words as the bases for new enterprise ; he speaks of Trusts, and his own people study his utter- ance as when a theological contest grows hot men study texts. The managers of Trusts sigh with relief, and the enemies of Trusts with disappointment, because they think he has found no plan; but both alike agree that on his commen ial policy, and on that almost alone, will depend the future politics of the Union. Cuban affairs are diffi- cult; it is well to have hope for the Philippines ; the Monroe doctrine is always to be respected ; but, cry Americans in their hearts, are the rich to grow richer, or is wealth to be more equally distributed ?—that is the burning question. For ourselves, we think the President is a little misunderstood, and that he is more decided than the world as yet imagines. He still regards vast combina- tions of capital as inevitable outcomes of modern commerce, but there is slowly growing in his mind a plan by which they may be controlled for the benefit of the people. He asks for a Minister of Commerce who, among other duties, can watch them ; insists, to the dismay of managers, that their transactions must be made "public," possibly by ap- pointing that Minister an ex officio director of every gigantic Trust ; and says plainly that when their object is monopoly they become injurious to the community. There is food for reflection among capitalists in each of the President's hints; but it is not our object to discuss them closely to-day, but rather to point out the magnitude of the space which the accumulation of wealth occupies in American thought. Our cousins have no wider mind than Mr. Roosevelt's among their governing men, and this is his preoccupation. It is the same in France, where the most active politicians, those interested in colonial enterprise, are avowedly in all their proposals seeking only wealth for France ; in Germany, where the very Constitution is rocking through the contest for prosperity between Industrials and Agrarians ; even in Russia, where the newspapers threaten war with Britain all across Asia if she ventures to put on a countervailing duty against Russian sugar.
Indeed, if Sir E. Monson's view is correct, even this country is being carried away by the movement. He is a most experienced diplomatist, and he declares that the greatest change which he marl:s in modern diplomacy is the ascendency of the commercial spirit. "It is," be says, "to the colossal growth and importance of our commerce that the final transformation of our diplomacy is due. I am certainly divulging no professional secret when I assert that the importance of the large proportion of international questions is in these days to be ascribed to their bearing and influence upon the well-being of our foreign trade. The genius of commercial expansion has supported the footsteps of the explorer and the missionary, and the necessities and demands of the home producer have inspired the councils of Downing Street on equal terms with the political expediency and patriotic assertion of Imperial ambition." Thus, he continues—and_ remember he speaks for England—diplomacy has become the" intimate associate, if not the handmaid, of commercial progress." Diplomatists, even British diplomatists, have "become com- mercial agents," and, he adds, with a certain bitterness of self-defence, they are "never remiss in pushing the interests of their nationals." It is all true, and true all over the world. In Africa, in China, in Turkey, even in the countries of Europe, we are contending like our rivals for oppor- tunities of gain. It is true that having had the first start, and maintaining Free-trade for all as our ruling principle, we are often defensive while they are aggressive ; but still the pivot of our diplomacy is the profit which we seek like the rest of the world from com- merce. It is of no use lamenting the change, or deploring the sordidness which has crept into international action ; we can, as Sir E. Monson hints, keep honest, and that is all, for the whole population presses on the Foreign Office the necessity of "a commercial policy," the Government is adjured to appoint Commercial Under-Secretaries who may guide Ambassadors, and if the smallest " concession " is missed anywhere the wires quiver with complaints, which are always accepted by the Press and a large section of the public as entirely justified.
Will this mighty change in international relations con- tinue for any length of time ? We fear it will, for it is fos- tered and deepened by the enormous growth in all European countries excepting France of the populations, who in many of them could not now live upon the productiveness of agriculture alone. It is fostered and deepened also by the softening of all Western civilisations, with its necessary result, the desire for leisure—which in moderation need not be costly—and for more comfort in clothes, warmth, food, and lodging, which is very costly indeed, And it is fostered and deepened most of all by the success in getting rich of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, who seem to their envious competitors—frightened, no doubt, beyond their natural fear, by awe of the Trust combinations—to intend to monopolise the very sunshine. Envy is a quality which grows greener with age. It is not at the end of years of stubborn competition that the shopkeeper who has suc- ceeded and the shopkeeper who has failed begin to love one another. Some new event may turn the attention of the world from its present continuous contemplation of its own stomach—a great religious revival, for instance, would do that—or some new development of science, such as a discovery of the way to obtain nitrogen from the air, of which rumours are now circulating, might, by increasing the productiveness of the soil, lighten the existing pressure; but if things continue as they are, this generation at least will know no respite from the fierce trading struggle. Whether it will produce great disaster to this country or to others we cannot pretend to foresee ; but of this we feel fairly confident, that it will not allow to the civilised races any relaxation in that huge waste of its resources which it calls, and which is, "a far-sighted condition of preparation for defence." Commercial contests make the nations bitter, if only because their incidents are visible every day, and are visible to the unlearned. The unhistorical notion that the democracy is peaceful is already dying away, and now the other and later notion that commerce would bind the peoples together in love must be abandoned too. The contest of the hungry for food is never amicable, and in the present circumstances of the world the peoples believe that the great storehouses of the food they are seeking, the poten- tially rich countries of Asia, South America, and Africa, can be acquired or dominated by fleets and armies. It is possible, of course, by wise policy maintained for many years to avert disastrous collisions, but it will only be done by choosing wise and peaceful men for diplomatists, and remembering, as we fancy from his speech that Sir E. Monson remembers, that their task is not lighter but more difficult than ever. They have not only to satisfy or soothe the ambition of the Kings, but the more dangerous, because more restless and deep-rooted, ambition of the peoples for wealth. The King could go without the new province, or at least wait his opportunity, but the people dissatisfied with its share of comfort will neither forego its hopes nor wait long for their realisation. "Bread, and not so much talking!" is as much the cry of the trader who sees his mining concession, or his market, or his profit slipping from his grasp as it ever was that of the Parisian mob. We declare as we read the daily telegrams from the Yangtsze- kiang that we wonder, not so much that the nations are tricky over the withdrawal of troops, as that they succeed in preventing the rifles from going off of themselves.
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