Page 265 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

246 A Twentieth-Century Outlook.

founded, and which in early days were mighty
indeed towards the overthrowing of strongholds
of evil. What, in such a case, shall play the
tremendous part which the Church of the
Middle Ages, with all its defects and with all
the shortcomings of its ministers, played amid
the ruin of the Roman Empire and the flood
of the barbarians ? If our own civilization is
becoming material only, a thing limited in hope
and love to this world, I know not what we
have to offer to save ourselves or others ; but in
either event, whether to go down finally under
a flood of outside invasion, or whether to suc-
ceed, by our own living faith, in converting to
our ideal civilization those who shall thus press
upon us, — in either event we need time, and
time can be gained only by organized material
force.
Nor is this view advanced in any spirit of
unfriendliness to the other ancient civilizations,
whose genius admittedly has been and is foreign
to our own. One who believes that God has
made of one blood all nations of men who dwell
on the face of the whole earth cannot but check
and repress, if he ever feels, any movement of
aversion to mankind outside his own race. But