se certain common ideals,) was lagging several
hundred years behind. They tried to warn the others. But the others were
occupied with their own affairs.

I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bringing in one
more. The Ship of State (that old and trusted expression which is ever
new and always picturesque,) of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the
Romans and the Venetians and the merchant adventurers of the seventeenth
century had been a sturdy craft, constructed of well-seasoned wood, and
commanded by officers who knew both their crew and their vessel and
who understood the limitations of the art of navigating which had been
handed down to them by their ancestors.

Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery. First one part,
then another of the old ship of state was changed. Her dimensions were
increased. The sails were discarded for steam. Better living quarters
were established, but more people were forced to go down into the
stoke-hole, and while the work was safe and fairly remunerative, they
did not like it as well as their old and more dangerous job in the
rigging. Finally, and almost imperceptibly, the old wooden square-rigger
had been transformed into a modern ocean liner. But the captain and the
mates remained the same. They were appointed or elected in the same
way as a hundred years before. They were taught the same system of
navigation which had served the mariners of the fifteenth century.
In their cabins hung the same charts and signal flags which had done
service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great. In short, they
were (through no fault of their own) completely incompetent.

The sea of international politics is not very broad. When those Imperial
and Colonial liners began to try and outrun each other, accidents were
bound to happen. They did happen. You can still see the wreckage if you
venture to pass through that part of the ocean.

And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is in dreadful
need of men who will assume the new leadership--who will have the
courage of their own visions and who will recognise clearly that we are
only at the beginning of the voyage, and have to learn an entirely new
system of seamanship.

They will have to serve for years as mere apprentices. They will have
to fight their way to the top against every possible form of opposition.
When they reach the bridge, mutiny of an envious crew may cause their
death. But some day, a m