No life is self-sustained. For the individual and the nation, isolation
means death. If the resources by which life is sustained were not
furnished by others we should soon be at the end of our career.
Charles Francis Adams, the historian and publicist, of Boston,
Mass., in his address at Lexington, Va., on January 19, 1907,
at the centennial celebration of General Lee’s birth, told the
throng of Southerners, there in the shadow of Lee’s old home,
that the Confederacy was beaten in the markets of the world,
that the economic laws held it in an iron grip, that if 100,000
men could have been sent to reenforce Lee, in the last days of
the war, his condition would have been worse than before, as
even their meager food-supply would only the sooner have been
exhausted. With the South depleted of food by the four years’ of
conflict, with the markets of the world closed to her, and no
source of subsistence open to her armies, valor and devotion
could count for only little.
This consideration enters largely into England’s determination
to keep her navy stronger than those of any other two powers. So
much of her food-supply comes from abroad that she must maintain
control of the ocean routes of trade.
(2726)