FIFTY MILLION STRONG 



of America, with its 1,500 miles of coast-line. The Encyclo- 

 pedia Britannica says that the Mississippi River with its 

 branches affords 35,000 miles of navigable waterway. All 

 Europe has 17,000 miles, or less than one-half the length of 

 the great central waterway of the United States. It is no 

 wonder that Napoleon said, ' The nation which controls the 

 Mississippi Valley will be the most powerful nation on earth/ " 

 The United States enjoys "isolation from other commanding 

 powers. The favorable location of the United States for 

 internal development is equaled by no other nation in the 

 world, because of the fact that it is separated by many thou- 

 sands of miles of sea from the other powers of our time." 1 



The preceding facts coupled with the two facts that America 

 can supply all her own needs and is by virtue of the Monroe 

 Doctrine guardian of the whole Western Hemisphere, lead to 

 the belief that from the standpoint of environment America 

 is facile princeps among the nations of earth. 



Third, America's Life. Most of the early inhabitants of 

 America came to this country during the two great upheavals 

 in Europe that have contributed so much to modern civiliza- 

 tion, viz., the Reformation and the English Revolution. Now, 

 these two upheavals having been not local but European 

 events, and their purposes having been, in the case of the 

 Reformation, to secure religious liberty, and in the case of 

 the Revolution, to obtain primarily political liberty, it can be 

 readily seen that the two ideas that dominated the early 

 colonists of the United States were religious and political 

 liberty. With these two ideas in the very warp and woof of 

 their natures and having in their new homes the major tasks 

 of overcoming the Indians, conquering the wilderness, estab- 

 lishing orderly governments and constructing a new society, 

 the pioneer Americans developed into a people strong of body, 

 magnificent in initiative, proud of their religious freedom and 

 loving political liberty. With the beginning of the Revolu- 

 tionary War, America entered upon a new era in her national 



1 The several quotations of this paragraph are from " The Call of the 

 World," W. E. Doughty, pp. 67, 68, 69. 



