barriers of calm deliberation, and is deaf to the voice of reason.
That the consideration of relative power enters for much in the
diplomatic settlement of international difficulties is also certain,
just as that it goes for much in the ordering of individual careers.
"Can," as well as "will," plays a large share in the decisions of
life.

Like each man and woman, no state lives to itself alone, in a
political seclusion resembling the physical isolation which so long
was the ideal of China and Japan. All, whether they will or no, are
members of a community, larger or, smaller; and more and more those of
the European family to which we racially belong are touching each
other throughout the world, with consequent friction of varying
degree. That the greater rapidity of communication afforded by steam
has wrought, in the influence of sea power over the face of the globe,
an extension that is multiplying the points of contact and emphasizing
the importance of navies, is a fact, the intelligent appreciation of
which is daily more and more manifest in the periodical literature of
Europe, and is further shown by the growing stress laid upon that arm
of military strength by foreign governments; while the mutual
preparation of the armies on the European continent, and the fairly
settled territorial conditions, make each state yearly more wary of
initiating a contest, and thus entail a political quiescence there,
except in the internal affairs of each country. The field of external
action for the great European states is now the world, and it is
hardly doubtful that their struggles, unaccompanied as yet by actual
clash of arms, are even under that condition drawing nearer to
ourselves. Coincidently with our own extension to the Pacific Ocean,
which for so long had a good international claim to its name, that sea
has become more and more the scene of political development, of