A longer life would have given President McKinley opportunity to develop the field into which he had led the Republic; but it is proof of the man’s quality that he did his work so well it cannot be undone. He stood like a rock against declaring war with Spain not only until he knew what was the will of the people, but until they knew it. He did not go forward until, out of the mighty passions of April, 1898, the millions of Americans had come to know themselves. When the vital purpose of the nation was so fixed it never could turn back, then the hand of the President made the signal which flung wide the gates of the great Republic, and commanded his legions to possess the earth.
That was a mighty trial a supreme test of a marvelous man. He knew the vital consequences bound up in action then. Things could never again be as they were before war was declared. It was not simply a fight with Spain, and a victory over her; it was an advance upon the world. It was not simply measuring lances with Leon and Castile; it was measuring the might of brain and brawn, of courage and skill, of America’s splendid manhood, against all the forces of all the world, and for all time! He could not let his people make a mistake. If he had yielded at the first hot demand for war, the recall would have sounded from millions before the first day’s march was done. But he waited till the pressure of his people proved that they were all of one mind; that they had heard the assembly call of a world duty, and had all “fallen in.” And then he gave the command: “Forward!”
Has it ever occurred to the reader how small a part of the McKinley expansion is expressed in these figures: “124,340 square miles annexed?”
That is only the land, the rock and soil, the food and drink, the most material and least expressive of all the elements in this material advance. Even in square miles, imagine what the annexation of Hawaii means. Compute the vastness of that realm acquired in the Philippines. Why, it is the breadth of the whole Pacific Ocean, and a path so wide that no nation can send a ship around the world without trespassing on the boundless domain of the young Republic. William McKinley has advanced the borders of his nation to include the seas. He has set the boundaries of the United States of America so far that they embrace one-half the earth. From the sentinel, St. Thomas, eastern outpost in the Atlantic’s waves, across the continent, and out to the farthest verge of the mighty Pacific, to the gates of ancient Asia, he has fixed the frontiers of his country.