Page 144 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

Anglo-American Reunion. 125

a single nation. Like the pettier interests of
the land, it must be competed for, perhaps
fought for. The greatest of the prizes for
which nations contend, it too will serve, like
other conflicting interests, to keep alive that
temper of stern purpose and strenuous emula-
tion which is the salt of the society of civilized
states, whose unity is to be found, not in a flat
identity of conditions — the ideal of socialism
— but in a common standard of moral and
intellectual ideas.
Also, amid much that is shared by all the
nations of European civilization, there are, as
is universally recognized, certain radical differ-
ences of temperament and character, which
tend to divide them into groups having the
marked affinities of a common origin. When,
as frequently happens on land, the members
of these groups are geographically near each
other, the mere proximity seems, like similar
electricities, to develop repulsions which render
political variance the rule and political combi-
nation the exception. But when, as is the case
with Great Britain and the United States, the
frontiers are remote, and contact — save in
Canada — too slight to cause political friction,