Hay had been so long at the head of foreign affairs that at
last the stream of events favored him. With infinite effort he
had achieved the astonishing diplomatic feat of inducing the
Senate, with only six negative votes, to permit Great Britain to
renounce, without equivalent, treaty rights which she had for
fifty years defended tooth and nail. This unprecedented triumph
in his negotiations with the Senate enabled him to carry one step
further his measures for general peace. About England the Senate
could make no further effective opposition, for England was won,
and Canada alone could give trouble. The next difficulty was with
France, and there the Senate blocked advance, but England assumed
the task, and, owing to political changes in France, effected the
object -- a combination which, as late as 1901, had been
visionary. The next, and far more difficult step, was to bring
Germany into the combine; while, at the end of the vista, most
unmanageable of all, Russia remained to be satisfied and
disarmed. This was the instinct of what might be named
McKinleyism; the system of combinations, consolidations, trusts,
realized at home, and realizable abroad.
With the system, a student nurtured in ideas of the eighteenth
century, had nothing to do, and made not the least presence of
meddling; but nothing forbade him to study, and he noticed to his
astonishment that this capitalistic scheme of combining
governments, like railways or furnaces, was in effect precisely
the socialist scheme of Jaures and Bebel.
Pages:
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622