Page 274 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth- Century Outlook. 255

cal development and material prosperity which
it has owed to the virile energies of its sons,
alike in commerce and in war. To these
energies the mechanical and scientific acquire-
ments of the past half-century or more have
extended means whereby prosperity has in-
creased manifold, as have the inequalities in
material well-being existing between those with-
in its borders and those without, who have not
had the opportunity or the wit to use the
same advantages. And along with this pre-
eminence in wealth arises the cry to disarm,
as though the race, not of Europe only, but
of the world, were already run, and the goal
of universal peace not only reached but se-
cured. Yet are conditions such, even within
our favored borders, that we are ready to dis-
band the particular organized manifestation
of physical force which we call the police?
Despite internal jealousies and friction on
the continent of Europe, perhaps even because
of them, the solidarity of the European family
therein contained is shown in this great
common movement, the ultimate beneficence
of which is beyond all doubt, as evidenced by
the British domination in India and Egypt,