Page 259 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

240 A Twentieth-Century Outlook. ;

behind our predecessors of two generations
ago, men who had not felt the deadening in-
fluence of merely economical ideas, because
they reached manhood before these attained
the preponderance they achieved under politi-
cians of the Manchester school ; a preponder-
ance 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 spir-
ited 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^