Page 128 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

Anglo-American Reunion. 109

along have realized — or at the least have been
dimly conscious— that such a state of things
is wrong and harmful. As a matter of senti-
ment only, this reviving affection well might
fix the serious attention of those who watch the
growth of world questions, recognizing how far
imagination and sympathy rule the world ; but
when, besides the powerful sentimental impulse,
it is remembered that beneath considerable
differences of political form there lie a com-
mon inherited political tradition and habit of
thought, that the moral forces which govern
and shape political development are the same
in either people, the possibility of a gradual
approach to concerted action becomes increas-
ingly striking. Of all the elements of the civi-
lization that has spread over Europe and
America, none is so potential for good as that
singular combination of two essential but
opposing factors — of individual freedom with
subjection to law— which finds its most vigor-
ous working in Great Britain and the United
States, its only exponents in which an approach
to a due balance has been effected. Like other'
peoples, we also sway between the two, inclin-
ing now to one side, now to the other ; but the