Page 282 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth-Century Outlook. 263

blood ; still leaves in recognized dominion, over
fair regions of great future import, a system
whose hopelessness of political and social im-
provement the lapse of time renders continu-
ally more certain, — an evil augury for the
future, if a turning tide shall find it unchanged,
an outpost of barbarism ready for alien oc-
cupation.
It is essential to our own good, it is yet more
essential as part of our duty to the common-
wealth of peoples to which we racially belong,
that we look with clear, dispassionate, but
resolute eyes upon the fact that civilizations on
different planes of material prosperity and
progress, with different spiritual ideals, and
with very different political capacities, are fast
closing together. It is a condition not unpre-
cedented in the history of the world. When
it befell a great united empire, enervated by
long years of unwarlike habits among its chief
citizens, it entailed ruin, but ruin deferred
through centuries, thanks to the provision
made beforehand by a great general and states-
man. The Saracenic and Turkish invasions,
on the contrary, after generations of advance,
were first checked, and then rolled back; for