Page 236 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future
P. 236
A TWENTIETH-CENTURY
OUTLOOK.
May, 1897.
INALITY, the close of a life, of a relation-
X ship, of an era, even though this be a purely
artificial creation of human arrangement, in all
cases appeals powerfully to the imagination, and
especially to that of a generation self-conscious
as ours, a generation which has coined for itself
the phrase fin de Steele to express its belief, how-
ever superficial and mistaken, that it knows its
own exponents and its own tendencies; that,
amid the din of its own progress sounding in
its ears, it knows not only whence it comes but
whither it goes. The nineteenth century is
about to die, only to rise again in the twentieth.
Whence did it come? How far has it gone?
Whither is it going ?
A full reply to such queries would presume an
abridged universal history of the expiring cen-
