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Page 45
For the reasons mentioned it has been an easy but a short-sighted
policy, wherever it has been found among statesmen or among
journalists, to fasten attention purely on internal and economical
questions, and to reject, if not to resent, propositions looking
towards the organization and maintenance of military force, or
contemplating the extension of our national influence beyond our own
borders, on the plea that we have enough to do at home,--forgetful
that no nation, as no man, can live to itself or die to itself. It is
a policy in which we are behind our predecessors of two generations
ago, men who had not felt the deadening influence of merely economical
ideas, because they reached manhood before these attained the
preponderance they achieved under politicians of the Manchester
school; a preponderance which they still retain because the youths of
that time, who grew up under them, have not yet quite passed off the
stage. It is the lot of each generation, salutary no doubt, to be
ruled by men whose ideas are essentially those of a former day.
Breaches of continuity in national action are thus moderated or
avoided; but, on the other hand, the tendency of such a condition is
to blind men to the spirit of the existing generation, because its
rulers have the tone of their own past, and direct affairs in
accordance with it. On the very day of this writing there appears in
an American journal a slashing contrast between the action of Lord
Salisbury in the Cretan business and the spirited letter of Mr.
Gladstone upon the failure of the Concert. As a matter of fact,
however, both those British statesmen, while belonging to parties
traditionally opposed, are imbued above all with the ideas of the
middle of the century, and, governed by them, consider the disturbance
of quiet the greatest of all evils. It is difficult to believe that if
Mr. Gladstone were now in his prime, and in power, any object would
possess in his eyes an importance at all comparable to that of keeping
the peace. He would feel for the Greeks, doubtless, as Lord Salisbury
doubtless does; but he would maintain the Concert as long as he
believed that alone would avoid war. When men in sympathy with the
ideas now arising among Englishmen come on the stage, we shall see a
change--not before.
The same spirit has dominated in our own country ever since the civil
war--a far more real "revolution" in its consequences than the
struggle of the thirteen colonies against Great Britain, which in our
national speech has received the name--forced our people, both North
and South, to withdraw their eyes from external problems, and to
concentrate heart and mind with passionate fervor upon an internal
strife, in which one party was animated by the inspiring hope of
independence, while before the other was exalted the noble ideal of
union. That war, however, was directed, on the civil side, by men who
belonged to a generation even then passing away. The influence of
their own youth reverted with the return of peace, and was to be seen
in the ejection--by threat of force--of the third Napoleon from
Mexico, in the acquisition of Alaska, and in the negotiations for the
purchase of the Danish islands and of Samana Bay. Whatever may have
been the wisdom of these latter attempts,--and the writer, while
sympathizing with the spirit that suggested them, questions it from a
military, or rather naval, stand-point,--they are particularly
interesting as indicating the survival in elderly men of the
traditions accepted in their youth, but foreign to the generation then
rapidly coming into power, which rejected and frustrated them.
The latter in turn is now disappearing, and its successors, coming and
to come, are crowding into its places. Is there any indication of the
ideas these bring with them, in their own utterances, or in the spirit
of the world at large, which they must needs reflect; or, more
important perhaps still, is there any indication in the conditions of
the outside world itself which they should heed, and the influence of
which they should admit, in modifying and shaping their policies,
before these have become hardened into fixed lines, directive for many
years of the future welfare of their people?
To all these questions the writer, as one of the departing generation,
would answer yes; but it is to the last that his attention, possibly
by constitutional bias, is more naturally directed. It appears to him
that in the ebb and flow of human affairs, under those mysterious
impulses the origin of which is sought by some in a personal
Providence, by some in laws not yet fully understood, we stand at the
opening of a period when the question is to be settled decisively,
though the issue may be long delayed, whether Eastern or Western
civilization is to dominate throughout the earth and to control its
future. The great task now before the world of civilized Christianity,
its great mission, which it must fulfil or perish, is to receive into
its own bosom and raise to its own ideals those ancient and different
civilizations by which it is surrounded and outnumbered,--the
civilizations at the head of which stand China, India, and Japan.
This, to cite the most striking of the many forms in which it is
presented to us, is surely the mission which Great Britain, sword ever
at hand, has been discharging towards India; but that stands not
alone. The history of the present century has been that of a constant
increasing pressure of our own civilization upon these older ones,
till now, as we cast our eyes in any direction, there is everywhere a
stirring, a rousing from sleep, drowsy for the most part, but real,
unorganized as yet, but conscious that that which rudely interrupts
their dream of centuries possesses over them at least two
advantages,--power and material prosperity,--the things which
unspiritual humanity, the world over, most craves.
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