Traditional American Policy in the Atlantic

Abstract

Tp HEODORE ROOSEVELT once said that the era of the future would be that of the Pacific. By this he meant that the Mediterranean Era had seen its day; that the Atlantic Era, now dominant, was drawing to a close; and that the Pacific Era, just beginning its dawn, would, as the inheritor of the Atlantic tradition, carry the torch of civilization onward, doubtless to a more significant purpose and end. Whether the prediction of Theodore Roosevelt will be sustained by the uncompromising evidence of history remains a question. It suggests, however, the significance of the Atlantic in the early development and the historical evolution of the American tradition. It also suggests the place of the Atlantic tradition in the future course of America and the world, should Atlantic considerations yield primacy to Pacific considerations. The eras mentioned, increments of are in each case attached to areas, which are increments of space. The. Mediterranean Era had Greece, Rome, Carthage, and Asia Minor; the Atlantic Era has Europe and the Americas; the Pacific Era will have the Americas and Asia. In the development of any great tradition, national or otherwise, certain divisions of time and space are coextensive. They are not one and the same thing. But they are essential to each other. In this respect, development of the American tradition as regards the Atlantic. is no more different than any other traditional development. European civilization, which has spread throughout the world, has done so through and by means of the Atlantic area. That it has penetrated all parts of the world increases rather than lessens the importance of the Atlantic as the seat of that civilization, and as the base of its dissemination. European civilization, sometimes called Western civilization, is a common one, though it is rich in minor variations. It is influenced by a common religion. It has recourse to a common reservoir of scientific ideas. In the industrial and political fields, it faces common problems. In every department of life, individual and collective, the ideas of liberty and law, inherited in part from Greece and Rome, and in part indigenous, have been fundamental. Through the Atlantic area, and during the Atlantic Era, European civilization has conquered the world. Up to the present the most important fact in modern history has been the expansion of Europe. This expansion has extended to knowledge, fashions, ideas, skill, and modes of government and administration. These have gone everywhere, establishing uniform means of thought and experience. Their spread has led to the unity and the homogeneity of North America. It has had much influence in India, China, Japan, and every other part of the world. Modern .communications, the result of Western scientific discovery, and an inexpensive press, the natural consequence of political freedom and economic enterprise, have meant a common fund of ideas and impressions. Scientific discovery and inventive genius have had their effect in the world. Thus, time, technology, and a creative spirit have given Europe, up to now, its primary in the world. That Western civilization has allowed a perversion of a part of its peoples and nations to seize the natural devices of political freedom and economic enterprise for the spread and maintenance of totalitarian ideas and practices, seems, for the time being, to be its undoing. One thing is clear. Only the survival of the best of the Atlantic tradition, both European and American, will give any prospect of democracy, economic freedom, and peace in the world of the future. The American colonial tradition was definitely an Atlantic tradition. The United States was settled by European peoples. They had to come in ships, across the Atlantic. Their religious doctrines and institutions, their political ideas, their administrative practices, and their economic and social systems were all derived from Europe. Evidences of this Atlantic attachment of our Colonial founding fathers are not difficult to find. For one thing, they were in the main British citizens and subjects. Not until it became their only political recourse did they throw off their British allegiance. At the cost of much time and effort, they sought their rights as Englishmen, and sought to redress their grievances through the constitutional guarantees of their fathers, which they assumed followed them to the new shores. Educational influences were exclusively European, as basic educational practices and the early institutions of learning clearly establish. Even Thomas