Page 256 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth-Century Outlook, 237

ment, the most easily conferred because the
simplest in conception. The Japanese have
shown great capacity, but they met little resist-
ance ; and it is easier by far to move and to
control an island kingdom of forty millions
than a vast continental territory containing
near tenfold that number of inhabitants. Com-
parative slowness of evolution may be predi-
cated, but that which for so long has kept
China one, amid many diversities, may be
counted upon in the future to insure a substan-
tial unity of impulse which, combined with its
mass, will give tremendous import to any
movement common to the whole.
To assert that a few selected characteristics,
such as the above, summarize the entire ten-
dency of a century of teeming human life, and
stand alone among the signs that are chiefly
to be considered in looking to the future,
would be to take an untenable position. It
may be said safely, however, that these factors,
because the future to which they point is more
remote, are less regarded than others which
are less important ; and further, that those
among them which mark our own day are also
the factors whose very existence is specially