monopolies, his seizure of the canal zone, his irrigation acts, his reservation of public lands all exemplify in one way and another his aversion from the spirit of laissez-faire, his passion for identifying the state with the man who does things. In domestic affairs this policy generally estranged the "big interests" and won the support of the "plain people." In foreign affairs the big interests supported him, but the plain people were first dazzled, and then astonished, and then a little perplexed. The plain people do not understand foreign affairs.
President McKinley, by instinct and upbringing a domestically-minded statesman, had indeed begun to speak in a resigned way of manifest destiny with regard to our newly acquired island possessions. He could hardly do otherwise, for this was the midsummer time of the imperial enthusiasm of the "Anglo-Saxons." These were the days of Rhodesian dreamers; Kitchener was fighting in Egypt; Roberts was fighting in South Africa; and in 1899 Mr. Kipling struck up his famous chant: "Take up the white man's burden, send forth the best ye breed." And so McKinley gravely recognized our manifest destiny in the Far East. Yet John Hay says that he was called in by McKinley to discuss foreign affairs not more than once a month, but that as soon as Roosevelt was in office he was called upon every day. It was Roosevelt first who embraced manifest destiny with the joy of an enkindled political imagination. It was he that resolutely
