Page 286 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth-Century Outlook. 267

ideal ; and the material, which comes first and
has in itself no salt of life to save from corrup-
tion, must be controlled by other material forces,
until the spiritual can find room and time to
germinate. We need not fear but that that
which appeals to the senses in our civilization
will be appropriated, even though it be neces-
sary to destroy us, if disarmed, in order to ob-
tain it. Our own civilization less its spiritual
element is barbarism; and barbarism will be the
civilization of those who assimilate its material
progress without imbibing the indwelling spirit.
Let us worship peace, indeed, as the goal at
which humanity must hope to arrive; but let
us not fancy that peace is to be had as a boy
wrenches an unripe fruit from a tree. Nor will
peace be reached by ignoring the conditions
that confront us, or by exaggerating the charms
of quiet, of prosperity, of ease, and by contrast-
ing these exclusively with the alarms and
horrors of war. Merely utilitarian arguments
have never convinced nor converted mankind,
and they never will ; for mankind knows that
there is something better. Its homage will
never be commanded by peace, presented as the
tutelary deity of the stock-market.