184. THE NICARAGUA CANAL. 
this eagle would lack the proverbial keenness of vision, 
that the great republic would have that political control 
pressed upon it, that commercial power freely offered to 
its citizens—all of it only to be rejected with cold in- 
difference. 
What is it we are doing my friends in rejecting this 
control? Are we blind to the strides the Germans are 
making toward commercial supremacy in Mexico and 
Central America? Is there no significance in the loans 
which English capitalists are freely offering to Nicar- 
agua to improve the navigation of her river and lake ? 
These things tend but oneway. The English merchant, 
the German chancellor, the French engineer—they know 
what these things mean ; they know what their nations 
need for their development. It is only we that do not 
know. It means empire, ladies and gentlemen—the con- 
trol or possession of this canal means empire. It is 
to our wealth, our development, our supremacy as a na- 
tion among nations, what India, and more than India, 
was to English merchants, and to the English crown and 
nation. It means the guiding of the great Pacific’s 
wealth into New York rather than Liverpool, into New 
Orleans instead of Marseilles. And we,—we also will 
learn this some day, when, alas! some other nation has 
seized the golden key as it drops from our listless hand 
and with it has unlocked for itself the door to wealth, 
fame, and power; when another nation has built and 
holds the Nicaragua canal; then will we learn and 
know, and then, the hand that dropped the key must 
grasp the sword in its place and so win back the key— 
and again will precious blood and treasure be wasted 
in long wars to regain that which with slightest effort 
and to our great profit we might now peacefully retain. 
Surely our commercial public should be anxious to 
secure for themselves the building of this canal in the 
interest of trade. Surely our national government 
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