For the reasons mentioned it has been an easy but a short-sighted policy, wherever it has been found among statesmen or among journalists, to fasten attention purely on internal and economical questions, and to reject, if not to resent, propositions looking towards the organization and maintenance of military force, or contemplating the extension of our national influence beyond our own borders, on the plea that we have enough to do at home,—­forgetful that no nation, as no man, can live to itself or die to itself.  It is a policy in which we are behind our predecessors of two generations ago, men who had not felt the deadening influence of merely economical ideas, because they reached manhood before these attained the preponderance they achieved under politicians of the Manchester school; a preponderance which they still retain because the youths of that time, who grew up under them, have not yet quite passed off the stage.  It is the lot of each generation, salutary no doubt, to be ruled by men whose ideas are essentially those of a former day.  Breaches of continuity in national action are thus moderated or avoided; but, on the other hand, the tendency of such a condition is to blind men to the spirit of the existing generation, because its rulers have the tone of their own past, and direct affairs in accordance with it.  On the very day of this writing there appears in an American journal a slashing contrast between the action of Lord Salisbury in the Cretan business and the spirited letter of Mr. Gladstone upon the failure of the Concert.  As a matter of fact, however, both those British statesmen, while belonging to parties traditionally opposed, are imbued above all with the ideas of the middle of the century, and, governed by them, consider the disturbance of quiet the greatest of all evils.  It is difficult to believe that if Mr. Gladstone were now in his prime, and in power, any object would possess in his eyes an importance at all comparable to that of keeping the peace.  He would feel for the Greeks, doubtless, as Lord Salisbury doubtless does; but he would maintain the Concert as long as he believed that alone would avoid war.  When men in sympathy with the ideas now arising among Englishmen come on the stage, we shall see a change—­not before.

The same spirit has dominated in our own country ever since the civil war—­a far more real “revolution” in its consequences than the struggle of the thirteen colonies against Great Britain, which in our national speech has received the name—­forced our people, both North and South, to withdraw their eyes from external problems, and to concentrate heart and mind with passionate fervor upon an internal strife, in which one party was animated by the inspiring hope of independence, while before the other was exalted the noble ideal of union.  That war, however, was directed, on the civil side, by men who belonged to a generation even then passing away.  The influence of their own youth reverted with the return of peace,