It is in this political fact, and not in the weighing of merely commercial advantages, that is to be found the great significance of the future canal across the Central American isthmus, as well as the importance of the Caribbean Sea; for the latter is inseparably intwined with all international consideration of the isthmus problem.  Wherever situated, whether at Panama or at Nicaragua, the fundamental meaning of the canal will be that it advances by thousands of miles the frontiers of European civilization in general, and of the United States in particular; that it knits together the whole system of American states enjoying that civilization as in no other way they can be bound.  In the Caribbean Archipelago—­the very domain of sea power, if ever region could be called so—­are the natural home and centre of those influences by which such a maritime highway as a canal must be controlled, even as the control of the Suez Canal rests in the Mediterranean.  Hawaii, too, is an outpost of the canal, as surely as Aden or Malta is of Suez; or as Malta was of India in the days long before the canal, when Nelson proclaimed that in that point of view chiefly was it important to Great Britain.  In the cluster of island fortresses of the Caribbean is one of the greatest of the nerve centres of the whole body of European civilization; and it is to be regretted that so serious a portion of them now is in hands which not only never have given, but to all appearances never can give, the development which is required by the general interest.

For what awaits us in the future, in common with the states of Europe, is not a mere question of advantage or disadvantage—­of more or less.  Issues of vital moment are involved.  A present generation is trustee for its successors, and may be faithless to its charge quite as truly by inaction as by action, by omission as by commission.  Failure to improve opportunity, where just occasion arises, may entail upon posterity problems and difficulties which, if overcome at all—­it may then be too late—­will be so at the cost of blood and tears that timely foresight might have spared.  Such preventive measures, if taken, are in no true sense offensive but defensive.  Decadent conditions, such as we observe in Turkey—­and not in Turkey alone—­cannot be indefinitely prolonged by opportunist counsels or timid procrastination.  A time comes in human affairs, as in physical ailments, when heroic measures must be used to save the life of a patient or the welfare of a community; and if that time is allowed to pass, as many now think that it was at the time of the Crimean war, the last state is worse than the first,—­an opinion which these passing days of the hesitancy of the Concert and the anguish of Greece, not to speak of the Armenian outrages, surely indorse.  Europe, advancing in distant regions, still allows to exist in her own side, unexcised, a sore that may yet drain her life-blood; still leaves in recognized dominion, over fair regions of great future import, a system whose hopelessness of political and social improvement the lapse of time renders continually more certain,—­an evil augury for the future, if a turning tide shall find it unchanged, an outpost of barbarism ready for alien occupation.