Page 254 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth-Century Outlook. 235 ;

vances in those regions. Contemporary with
all these movements, from the first to the last,
has been the development of great standing
armies, or rather of armed nations, in Europe
and, lastly, the stirring of the East, its entrance
into the field of Western interests, not merely
as a passive something to be impinged upon,
but with a vitality of its own, formless yet, but
significant, inasmuch as where before there
was torpor, if not death, now there is indis-
putable movement and life. Never again, prob-
ably, can there of it be said,
" It heard the legions thunder past,
Then plunged in thought again."
Of this the astonishing development of Japan
is the most obvious evidence ; but in India,
though there be no probability of the old mu-
tinies reviving, there are signs enough of the
awaking of political intelligence, restlessness
under foreign subjection, however beneficent,
desire for greater play for its own individuali-
ties; a movement which, because intellectual
and appreciative of the advantages of Western
material and political civilization, is less imme-
diately threatening than the former revolt, but
much more ominous of great future changes.