Page 250 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth-Century Outlook. 231 ;

advantages and the political traditions which
have united to confer power upon the West
and with the appreciation desire has arisen.
Coincident with the long pause which the
French Revolution imposed upon the process
of external colonial expansion which was so
marked a feature of the eighteenth century,
there occurred another singular manifestation
of national energies, in the creation of the
great standing armies of modern days, them-
selves the outcome of the levee en masse, and
of the general conscription, which the Revolu-
tion bequeathed to us along with its expositions
of the Rights of Man. Beginning with the
birth of the century, perfected during its con-
tinuance, its close finds them in full maturity
and power, with a development in numbers, in
reserve force, in organization, and in material
for war, over which the economist perpetually
wails, whose existence he denounces, and whose
abolition he demands. As freedom has grown
and strengthened, so have they grown and
strengthened. Is this singular product of a
century whose gains for political liberty are
undeniable, a mere gross perversion of human
activities, as is so confidently claimed on many