new city will be from the old one it
will replace at the Golden Gate. Of this universal change and
displacement the most significant factor--at least in our Western
civilization--has been the establishment of the German Empire, with
its ensuing commercial, maritime, and naval development. To it
certainly we owe the military impulse which has been transmitted
everywhere to the forces of sea and land--an impulse for which, in my
judgment, too great gratitude cannot be felt. It has braced and
organized Western civilization for an ordeal as yet dimly perceived.
But between 1850 and 1860 long desuetude of war, and confident
reliance upon the commercial progress which freedom of trade had
brought in its train, especially to Great Britain, had induced the
prevalent feeling that to-morrow would be as to-day, and much more
abundant. This was too consonant to national temperament not to
pervade America also; and it was promoted by a distance from Europe
and her complications much greater than now exists, and by the
consistent determination not to be implicated in her concerns. All
these factors went to constitute the atmosphere of indifference to
military affairs in general; and particularly to those external
interests of which a navy is the outward and visible sign and
champion.

I do not think there is error or exaggeration in this picture of the
"environment" of the navy in popular appreciation at the time I
entered. Under such conditions, which had obtained substantially since
soon after the War of 1812, and which long disastrously affected even
Great Britain, with all her proud naval traditions and maritime and
colonial interests, a military service cannot thrive. Indifference and
neglect tell on most individuals, and on all professions. The saving
clauses were the high sense of duty and of professional integrity,
which from first to last I have never known wanting in the service;
while the beauty of the ships themselves, quick as a docile and
intelligent animal to respond to the master's call, inspired affection
and intensified professional enthusiasm. The exercises of sails and
spars, under the varying exigencies of service, bewildering as they
may have seemed to the uninitiated, to the appreciative possessed
fascination, and were their own sufficient reward for the care
lavished upon them. In their mute yet exact response was some
compensation for external neglect; they were, so to say, the testimony
of a good conscienc