, whose mission seems yet
obscure, so the gradual broadening and tightening hold upon the
sentiment of American democracy of that conviction loosely
characterized as the Monroe doctrine finds its logical and inevitable
outcome in a great sea power, the correlative, in connection with that
of Great Britain, of those armies which continue to flourish under the
most popular institutions, despite the wails of economists and the
lamentations of those who wish peace without paying the one price
which alone has ever insured peace,--readiness for war.

Thus it was, while readiness for war lasted, that the Teuton was held
back until he became civilized, humanized, after the standard of that
age; till the root of the matter was in him, sure to bear fruit in due
season. He was held back by organized armed force--by armies. Will it
be said that that was in a past barbaric age? Barbarism, however, is
not in more or less material prosperity, or even political
development, but in the inner man, in the spiritual ideal; and the
material, which comes first and has in itself no salt of life to save
from corruption, 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 necessary to destroy us, if disarmed,
in order to obtain 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 contrasting 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.

Nothing is more ominous for the future of our race than that tendency,
vociferous at present, which refuses to recognize in the profession of
arms, in war, that something which inspired Wordsworth's "Happy
Warrior," which soothed the dying hours of He