Page 161 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

142 The Future in Relation to
The difference of conditions between the
United States of to-day and of the beginning
of this century illustrates aptly how necessary
it is to avoid implicit acceptance of precedents,
crystallized into maxims, and to seek for the
quickening principle which justified, wholly
or in part, the policy of one generation, but
whose application may insure a very different
course of action in a succeeding age. When
the century opened, the United States was
not only a continental power, as she now is,
but she was one of several, of nearly equal
strength as far as North America was con-
cerned, with all of whom she had differences
arising out of conflicting interests, and with
whom, moreover, she was in direct geographi-
cal contact, — a condition which has been
recognized usually as entailing peculiar prone-
ness to political friction for, while the in-
;
terests of two nations may clash in quarters
of the world remote from either, there is
both greater frequency and greater bitterness
when matters of dispute exist near at home,
and especially along an artificial boundary,
where the inhabitants of each are directly
in contact with the causes of the irritation.