Page 202 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

Preparedness for Naval War. 183

newly opened regions. The colonial expan-
sion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries is being resumed under our eyes, bringing
with it the same train of ambitions and feelings
that were exhibited then, though these are
qualified by the more orderly methods of mod-
ern days and by a well-defined mutual appre-
hension, — the result of a universal prepared-
ness for war, the distinctive feature of our own
time which most guarantees peace.
All this reacts evidently upon Europe, the
common mother-country of these various for-
eign enterprises, in whose seas and lands must
be fought out any struggle springing from
these remote causes, and upon whose inhab-
itants chiefly must fall both the expense and
the bloodshed thence arising. To these distant
burdens of disquietude — in the assuming of
which, though to an extent self-imposed, the
present writer recognizes the prevision of
civilization, instinctive rather than conscious,
against the perils of the future— is to be added
the proximate and unavoidable anxiety de-
pendent upon the conditions of Turkey and its
provinces, the logical outcome of centuries of
Turkish misrule. Deplorable as have been,