Page 140 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

Anglo-American Reunion. 121

manic campaigns, built up an outside barrier,
which, like a dike, for centuries postponed the
inevitable end, but which also, like every artifi-
cial 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, hard-
ship 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 can-
not 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