It is impossible that one who sees in the sea--in the function which it discharges towards the world at large--the most potent factor in national prosperity and in the course of history, should not desire a change in the mental attitude of our countrymen towards maritime affairs. The subject presents itself not merely as one of national importance, but as one concerning the world's history and the welfare of mankind, which are bound up, so far as we can see, in the security and strength of that civilization which is identified with Europe and its offshoots in America. For what, after all, is our not unjustly vaunted European and American civilization? An oasis set in the midst of a desert of barbarism, rent with many intestine troubles, and ultimately dependent, not upon its mere elaboration of organization, but upon the power of that organization to express itself in a menacing and efficient attitude of physical force, sufficient to resist the numerically overwhelming, but inadequately organized hosts of outsiders. Under present conditions these are diked off by the magnificent military organizations of Europe, which also as yet cope successfully with the barbarians within. Of what the latter are capable--at least in will--we have from time to time, and not least of late, terrific warnings, to which men scarcely can shut their eyes and ears; but sufficient attention hardly is paid to the possible dangers from those outside, who are wholly alien to the spirit of our civilization; nor do men realize how essential to the conservation of that civilization is the attitude of armed watchfulness between nations, which is maintained now by the great states of Europe. Even if we leave out of consideration the invaluable benefit to society, in this age of insubordination and anarchy, that so large a number of youth, at the most impressionable age, receive the lessons of obedience, order, respect for authority and law, by which military training conveys a potent antidote to lawlessness, it still would remain a mistake, plausible but utter, to see in the hoped-for subsidence of the military spirit in the nations of Europe a pledge of surer progress of the world towards universal peace, general material prosperity, and ease. That alluring, albeit somewhat ignoble, ideal is not to be attained by the representatives of civilization dropping their arms, relaxing the tension of their moral muscle, and from fighting animals becoming fattened cattle fit only for slaughter.