Contiguous land gives a nation cohesion; but it is the water that brings other nations near. The continent divides you from customers beyond the mountains; but the ocean unites you with the whole boundless, mysterious Orient. There you find a population of over six hundred millions of souls, between one fourth and one third of the inhabitants of the globe. You are not at a disadvantage in trading with them because they have the start of you in manufactures or skill or capital, as you would be in the countries to which the Atlantic leads. They offer you the best of all commerce--that with people less advanced, exchanging the products of different zones, a people awakening to the complex wants of a civilization that is just stirring them to a new life. Have you considered what urgent need there will be for those new fields? It is no paltry question of an outlet for the surplus products of a mere nation of seventy-five millions that confronts you. Your mathematical professors will tell you that, at the ratio of increase established in this Nation by the census returns for the century just closing, its population would amount during the next century to the bewildering and incomprehensible figure of twelve hundred millions. The ratio, of course, will not be maintained, since the exceptional circumstances that caused it cannot continue. But no one gives reasons why it should not be half as great. Suppose it to turn out only one fourth as great. Is it the part of statesmanship--is it even the part of every-day, matter-of-fact common sense--to reject or despise these Oriental openings for the products of this people of three hundred million souls the Twentieth Century would need to nourish within our borders? Our total annual trade with China now--with this customer whom the friendly ocean is ready to bring to your very doors--is barely twenty millions. That would be a commerce of the gross amount of six and two third cents for each inhabitant of our country in the next century, with that whole vast region adjoining you, wherein dwell one fourth of the human race! Even the Spanish trade with the Philippines was thirty millions. They are merely our stepping-stone. But would a wise man kick the stepping-stone away? [Sidenote: The New Blood Felt.]