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Two great questions were before the country: the annexation of Texas and the right to Oregon. Polk was for the immediate annexation of Texas and for the acquisition of Oregon up to 54° 40" north latitude, regardless of Great Britain's claims, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" became one of the battle-cries of the campaign.
He had crossed over to England almost directly after that final and fateful interview with them: he had obtained his commission and was back again in Belgium as a fighting man, ready for the work which was expected from Britain's sons by the whole of Europe now. And to-night he saw her again.
Public opinion and popular narratives are, however, fashioned by sentiment rather than founded on evidence; accordingly, Britain's prestige suffered from this event.
I often asked them how they, representing a couple of small States, came to get hold of the idea that they could whip a colossal Power like Great Britain in a life or death struggle; and almost invariably they informed me that they had expected that one of the great European Powers would take an active part in the struggle on their behalf, and, furthermore, they had been taught to think that Britain's Empire was rotten to the core, so much so that as soon as war commenced in earnest all her colonies would fall away from her and hoist the flag of independence, and that India would leap once again into open and bloody mutiny.
For had they not first crippled, by their West Indian raids, the ill-gotten resources of the Spaniard, and then crushed his last huge effort in Britain's Salamis, the glorious fight of 1588, what had we been by now but a popish appanage of a world-tyranny as cruel as heathen Rome itself, and far more devilish?
"Der open there to the right and left!" cried the commander of this unique company, as he marched them up to the crowd. "Make way for Mother Britain's ditter darlings! The coming sight is as much for their der benefit as your ditter fun. There, halt!" he continued, bringing the submissive creatures into their allotted place.
The girls were away at the munition plants, the young men at the war, fighting or lying under their little crosses or in their unknown and unmarked graves, on one of Britain's five battle fronts, or under the tossing waters of the Seven Seas where Britain's navy rides, guarding the world's freedom.
On the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, on the Treaty of Peace with Mexico, on the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1853, on the negotiations for the purchase of Cuba, on the filibuster expeditions of 1858, and the controversy of that year over Great Britain's reassertion of the right of search on all these questions he had very positive opinions and maintained them vigorously.
Generally speaking, the obstacle gives way. In this case Mr. George's obstacle had begun to give way long before December 21st the date of the speech. The flood had been pushing at it with increasing force since the foundation of the Ministry of Munitions in the preceding summer. But the crumbling process was not quick enough for Great Britain's needs, or for the energy of her Minister.
By a convention becoming operative in 1888 the canal is exempt from blockade, and vessels of all nations, whether armed or not, are forever to be allowed to pass through it in peace or time of war. Critics of Britain's paramount interest in India and her aspirations in the Far East, nevertheless, pretend to see a decided advantage accruing from England's control of things Egyptian.
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