Let us now, in the first place, look back and see what two of our most prominent statesmen have said in the past. They may be looked upon almost as prophets. The idea of territorial expansion is not a new one. In fact, it dates back half a century, and the thought of this expansion has been silently hatched ever since. In 1846, William H. Seward, afterward Secretary of State under the administration of Abraham Lincoln, published an open letter under the title, "We Should Carry Out Our Destiny." To carry out that destiny, said Mr. Seward in this letter, the United States should prepare themselves for their mission by getting rid of the Old World which still continued with ideas of another age upon portions of the American soil. In the same letter Mr. Seward also said that the monarchies of Europe could have neither peace nor truce as long as there remained to them one colony upon this continent. This Mr. Seward called buying out the foreigners. In 1846 he counted the ruler of Cuba and Porto Rico among the foreigners which should sell out their possessions to the United States. It was he who during his term of office purchased Alaska from the Czar of Russia for the sum of $7,200,000. He also negotiated for the acquisition of the Danish Antilles, but this project fell through, chiefly for the reason that at that time the President was opposed to it. In politics Mr. Seward favored a system which he compared to the ripe pear that detaches itself and falls into your hand. One thing seemed to him certain, and that was that the United States could not help annexing by force the people who would be too slow to come to them of their own free will. "I abhor war," he wrote. "I would not give one single human life for any portion of the continent which remains to be annexed; but I cannot get rid of the conviction that popular passion for territorial aggrandizement is irresistible. Prudence, justice and even timidity may restrain it for a time, but its force will be augmented by compression." It was a half century before the explosion occurred, but when it came its echoes resounded all over the world, carrying joy to some and fear to others, fear of this young giant of the New World. Again in 1852, in a speech made before the Senate upon the question of American commerce in the Pacific, Mr. Seward thus addressed his colleagues: