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Page 23
When Carthage fell, and Rome moved onward, without an equal enemy
against whom to guard, to the dominion of the world of Mediterranean
civilization, she approached and gradually realized the reign of
universal peace, broken only by those intestine social and political
dissensions which are finding their dark analogues in our modern times
of infrequent war. As the strife between nations of that civilization
died away, material prosperity, general cultivation and luxury,
flourished, while the weapons dropped nervelessly from their palsied
arms. The genius of C�sar, in his Gallic and Germanic campaigns, built
up an outside barrier, which, like a dike, for centuries postponed the
inevitable end, but which also, like every artificial barrier, gave
way when the strong masculine impulse which first created it had
degenerated into that worship of comfort, wealth, and general
softness, which is the ideal of the peace prophets of to-day. The wave
of the invaders broke in,--the rain descended, the floods came, the
winds blew, and beat upon the house, and it fell, because not founded
upon the rock of virile reliance upon strong hands and brave hearts to
defend what was dear to them.
Ease unbroken, trade uninterrupted, hardship done away, all roughness
removed from life,--these are our modern gods; but can they deliver
us, should we succeed in setting them up for worship? Fortunately, as
yet we cannot do so. We may, if we will, shut our eyes to the vast
outside masses of aliens to our civilization, now powerless because we
still, with a higher material development, retain the masculine
combative virtues which are their chief possession; but, even if we
disregard them, the ground already shakes beneath our feet with
physical menace of destruction from within, against which the only
security is in constant readiness to contend. In the rivalries of
nations, in the accentuation of differences, in the conflict of
ambitions, lies the preservation of the martial spirit, which alone is
capable of coping finally with the destructive forces that from
outside and from within threaten to submerge all the centuries have
gained.
It is not then merely, nor even chiefly, a pledge of universal peace
that may be seen in the United States becoming a naval power of
serious import, with clearly defined external ambitions dictated by
the necessities of her interoceanic position; nor yet in the cordial
co-operation, as of kindred peoples, that the future may have in store
for her and Great Britain. Not in universal harmony, nor in fond
dreams of unbroken peace, rest now the best hopes of the world, as
involved in the fate of European civilization. Rather in the
competition of interests, in that reviving sense of nationality, which
is the true antidote to what is bad in socialism, in the jealous
determination of each people to provide first for its own, of which
the tide of protection rising throughout the world, whether
economically an error or not, is so marked a symptom--in these jarring
sounds which betoken that there is no immediate danger of the leading
peoples turning their swords into ploughshares--are to be heard the
assurance that decay has not touched yet the majestic fabric erected
by so many centuries of courageous battling. In this same pregnant
strife the United States doubtless will be led, by undeniable
interests and aroused national sympathies, to play a part, to cast
aside the policy of isolation which befitted her infancy, and to
recognize that, whereas once to avoid European entanglement was
essential to the development of her individuality, now to take her
share of the travail of Europe is but to assume an inevitable task, an
appointed lot, in the work of upholding the common interests of
civilization. Our Pacific slope, and the Pacific colonies of Great
Britain, with an instinctive shudder have felt the threat, which able
Europeans have seen in the teeming multitudes of central and northern
Asia; while their overflow into the Pacific Islands shows that not
only westward by land, but also eastward by sea, the flood may sweep.
I am not careful, however, to search into the details of a great
movement, which indeed may never come, but whose possibility, in
existing conditions, looms large upon the horizon of the future, and
against which the only barrier will be the warlike spirit of the
representatives of civilization. Whate'er betide, Sea Power will play
in those days the leading part which it has in all history, and the
United States by her geographical position must be one of the
frontiers from which, as from a base of operations, the Sea Power of
the civilized world will energize.
For this seemingly remote contingency preparation will be made, if men
then shall be found prepared, by a practical recognition now of
existing conditions--such as those mentioned in the opening of this
paper--and acting upon that knowledge. Control of the sea, by maritime
commerce and naval supremacy, means predominant influence in the
world; because, however great the wealth product of the land, nothing
facilitates the necessary exchanges as does the sea. The fundamental
truth concerning the sea--perhaps we should rather say the water--is
that it is Nature's great medium of communication. It is improbable
that control ever again will be exercised, as once it was, by a single
nation. Like the pettier interests of the land, it must be competed
for, perhaps fought for. The greatest of the prizes for which nations
contend, it too will serve, like other conflicting interests, to keep
alive that temper of stern purpose and strenuous emulation which is
the salt of the society of civilized states, whose unity is to be
found, not in a flat identity of conditions--the ideal of
socialism--but in a common standard of moral and intellectual ideas.
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