Page 242 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth-Century Outlook. 223

concert of the powers, in the interest of their
own repose, to coerce Greece and the Cretans,
we may perhaps refrain from calling it noble.
The question remains, how long can it continue
respectable in the sense of being practicable of
realization, — a rational possibility, not an idle
dream ? Many are now found to say— and
among them some of the most bitter of the
advocates of universal peace, who are among
the bitterest of modern disputants— that when
the Czar Nicholas proposed to move the quiet
things, half a century ago, and to reconstruct
the political map of southeastern Europe in the
interest of well-founded quiet, it was he that
showed the idealism of rational statesmanship,
—
— the only truly practical statesmanship,
while the defenders of the status quo evinced
the crude instincts of the mere time-serving
politician. That the latter did not insure
quiet, even the quiet of desolation, in those
unhappy regions, we have yearly evidence.
How far is it now a practicable object, among
the nations of the European family, to continue
indefinitely the present realization of peace and
plenty, — in themselves good things, but which
are advocated largely on the ground that man