Page 157 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

138 The Future in Relation to

truth it was — any more recondite cause than
the urgent necessity of possessing tools wholly

fit for the work which war-ships are called
upon to do. The thing had to be done, if
the national fleet was to be other than an
impotent parody of naval force, a costly effigy
of straw. But, concurrently with the process
of rebuilding, there has been concentrated
upon the development of the new service
a degree of attention, greater than can be
attributed even to the voracious curiosity of
this age of newsmongering and of interviewers.
This attention in some quarters is undisguis-
edly reluctant and hostile, in others not only
friendly but expectant, in both cases betraying
a latent impression that there is, between the
appearance of the new-comer and the era
upon which we now are entering, something
in common. If such coincidence there be,
however, it is indicative not of a deliberate
purpose, but of a commencing change of
conditions, economical and political, through-
out the world, with which sea power, in the
broad sense of the phrase, will be associated
closely; not, indeed, as the cause, nor even
chiefly as a result, but rather as the leading