President McKinley stated that the Philippines, like Cuba and Porto Rico, "were intrusted to our hands by the Providence of God" (Boston, February 16, 1899), and one of his fellow imperialists--Senator Beveridge of Indiana--carried the argument one step farther (January 9, 1900) when he said in the Senate (_Congressional Record_, January 9, 1900, p. 704): "The Philippines are ours forever.... And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty to the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world." Manifest destiny is now urged to justify further acts of aggression by the United States against her weaker neighbors. _The Chicago Tribune_, discussing the Panama Canal and its implications, says editorially (May 5, 1916): "The Panama Canal has gone a long way towards making our shore continuous and the intervals must and will be filled up; not necessarily by conquest or even formal annexation, but by a decisive control in one form or another." Here the argument of manifest destiny is backed by the argument of "military necessity,"--the argument that led Great Britain to possess herself of Gibraltar, Suez and a score of other strategic points all round the earth, and to maintain, at a ruinous cost, a huge navy; the argument that led Napoleon across Europe in his march of bloody, fatal triumph; the argument that led Germany through Belgium in 1914--one of the weakest and yet one of the most seductive and compelling arguments that falls from the tongue of man. Because we have a western and an eastern front, we must have the Panama Canal. Because we have the Panama Canal, we must dominate Central America. The next step is equally plain; because we dominate Central America and the Panama Canal, there must be a land route straight through to the Canal. In the present state of Mexican unrest, that is impossible, and therefore we must dominate Mexico. The argument was stated with persuasive power by ex-Senator Albert J. Beveridge (_Collier's Weekly_, May 19, 1917). "Thus in halting fashion but nevertheless surely, the chain of power and influence is being forged about the Gulf. To neglect Mexico is to throw away not only one link but a large part of that chain without which the value and usefulness of the remainder are greatly diminished if indeed not rendered negligible." By a similar train of logic, the entire American continent, from Cape Horn to Bering Sea can and will be brought under the dominion of the United States.