The imperialists reply somewhat more temperately:—Ah, but the new islands will contribute very much to our trade. Their possession means the beginning of a commercial policy which will put the whole Pacific Ocean at the disposal of the American merchant. Who can foresee what tremendous developments may come from availing ourselves of regions lying so advantageously? When Congress in 1803 started to buy the great Province of Louisiana from France, there were also narrow-minded protests. At that time, too, anti-imperialists and fanatics became excited, and said that it was money thrown away; the land would never be populated. While to-day, a hundred years later, the world prepares to celebrate the anniversary of the purchase of Louisiana by a magnificent exposition at St. Louis—a transaction which has meant for the country a tremendous gain in wealth and culture. America is destined to be the mistress of the Pacific Ocean, and as soon as the canal is built across the isthmus the economic importance of the Philippines will appear more clearly every day. The anti-imperialists deny this. The financial statement of the entire war with Spain to the present moment shows that $600,000,000 have been wasted and ten thousand young men sacrificed without any advantage being so much as in sight. Whereto the imperialists reply:—There are other advantages. War is a training. The best thing which the nation can win is not riches, but strength; and in the very prosperity of America the weakening effect of luxury is greatly to be feared. The nerves of the nation are steeled in the school of war, and its muscles hardened. But the other side says that our civilization requires thousands of heroic deeds of the most diverse kinds, more than it needs those of the field of battle; and that the American doctrine of peace is much better adapted to strengthen the moral courage of the nation and to stimulate it than the modern training of war, which, in the end, is only a question of expenditure and science. What we chiefly need is serious and moral republican virtue. The incitements toward acquisition and the spirit of war, on the other hand, destroy the spirit of our democracy, and breed un-American, autocratic ambitions. War strengthens the blind faith of the leaders in their own dictatorial superiority, and so annihilates the feeling of independence and responsibility in the individual; and this is just the way for the nation to lose its moral and political integrity. The true patriotism which our youth ought to learn is not found in noisy jingoism, but in the silent fidelity to the Declaration of Independence of our fathers.