Page 251 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

232 A Twentieth-Century Outlook.

sides ? or is there possibly in it also a sign of
the times to come, to be studied in connec-
tion with other signs, some of which we have
noted ?
What has been the effect of these great
armies ? Manifold, doubtless. On the economi-
cal side there is the diminution of production,
the tax upon men's time and lives, the disad-
vantages or evils so dinned daily into our ears
that there is no need of repeating them here.
But is there nothing to the credit side of the
account, even perhaps a balance in their favor?
Is it nothing, in an age when authority is
weakening and restraints are loosening, that
the youth of a nation passes through a school
in which order, obedience, and reverence are
learned, where the body is systematically devel-
oped, where ideals of self-surrender, of courage,
of manhood, are inculcated, necessarily, because
fundamental conditions of military success ?
Is it nothing that masses of youths out of the
fields and the streets are brought together,
mingled with others of higher intellectual an-
tecedents, taught to work and to act together,
mind in contact with mind, and carrying
back into civil life that respect for constituted