“When we — we Anglo-Saxons — busked [prepared] ourselves for the first stage of the march, we began from that little historic reach of ground in the midst of the Friesland swamps, and we set our faces Westward, feeling no doubt the push of the Slav behind us. Then the Frontier was Britain and the sober peacefulness of land where are the ordered, cultivated English farmyards of to-day was the Wild West of the Frisians of that century... .”
“Then for centuries we halted and the van closed up with the firing-line, and we filled all England and all Europe with our clamour because for awhile we seemed to have gone as far Westward as it was possible; and the checked energy of the race reacted upon itself, rebounded as it were, and back we went to the Eastward again—crusading, girding at the Mahommedan, conquering his cities, breaking into his fortresses with mangonel, siege-engine and catapult... .
But always... we had a curious feeling that we had not reached the ultimate West even yet, and there was still a Frontier. Always that strange sixth sense turned our heads toward the sunset; and all through the Middle Ages we were peeking and prying into the Western horizon... .
And then at last a naked savage on the shores of a little island in what is now our West Indies, looking Eastward one morning, saw the caravels, and on that day the Frontier was rediscovered, and promptly a hundred thousand of the more hardy rushed to the skirmish-line and went at the wilderness as only the Anglo-Saxon can.
And then the skirmish-line decided that it would declare itself independent of the main army behind and form an advance column of its own, a separate army corps; and no sooner was this done than again the scouts went forward, went Westward, pushing the Frontier ahead of them, scrimmaging with the wilderness, blazing the way. At last they forced the Frontier over the Sierra Nevadas down to the edge of the Pacific. And here it would have been supposed that the Great March would have halted again as it did before the Atlantic, that here at last the Frontier ended.
But on the first of May, 1898, a gun was fired in the Bay of Manila, still farther Westward, and in response the skirmish-line crossed the Pacific, still pushing the Frontier before it. ...as the first boat bearing its contingent of American marines took ground on the Asian shore, the Frontier — at last after so many centuries, after so many marches, after so much fighting, so much spilled blood, so much spent treasure, dwindled down and vanished; for the Anglo-Saxon in his course of empire had circled the globe and brought the new civilization to the old civilization, and reached the starting point of history, the place from which the migrations began. So soon as the marines landed there was no longer any West... .”
When “the first boat bearing its contingent of American marines took ground on the Asian shore” there was “no longer any West”, thus marking “the passing of an epoch”. The close not just of the western frontier in America but the close of the global frontier of the west.
“Though we are of the same race, ...with the same blood-instincts as the old Frisian marsh people”, he wrote, “we are now come into a changed time and the great word of our century is no longer War, but Trade”: “Had the Lion-Hearted Richard lived to-day” he would have become a “leading representative of the Amalgamated Steel Companies”. Norris points out that the language of commerce and war are largely interchangeable, so that we speak of commercial “invasions”, trade “wars”, business being “captured”, opportunities “seized”, industries “killed”, monopolies “wrested away”, etc.,. Commerce as the continuation of war by other means. “So perhaps we have not lost the Frontier after all.” He even suggests a new phrase, “reversing that of Berkeley's”, “Eastward the course of commerce takes its way.” “And so goes the great movement, Westward, then Eastward, forward and then back”: “First Westward with the great migrations, now Eastward with the course of commerce, moving in a colossal arc..., as though upon the equator a giant dial hand oscillated,... now marking off the Westward progress, now traveling proportionately to the reaction toward the East.”
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