Page 158 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

American Naval Power. 139

characteristic of activities which shall cease
to be mainly internal, and shall occupy them-
selves with the wider interests that concern
the relations of states to the world at large.
And it is just at this point that the opposing
lines of feeling divide. Those who hold that
our political interests are confined to matters
within our own borders, and are unwilling to
admit that circumstances may compel us in
the future to political action without them,
look with dislike and suspicion upon the
growth of a body whose very existence indi-
cates that nations have international duties
as well as international rights, and that inter-
national complications will arise from which
we can no more escape than the states which
have preceded us in history, or those contem-
porary with [us. Others, on the contrary, re-
garding the conditions and signs of these
times, and the extra-territorial activities in
which foreign states have embarked so rest-
lessly and widely, feel that the nation, however
greatly against its wish, may become involved
in controversies not unlike those which in the
middle of the century caused very serious
friction, but which the generation that saw