Edmund Vance Cooke writes of the cruise of the American fleet around
the globe in the following significant lines:
This is the song of the thousand men who are multiplied by twelve,
Sorted and sifted, tested and tried, and muscled to dig and delve.
They come from the hum of city and shop, they come from the farm
and the field.
And they plow the acres of ocean now, but tell me, what is their
yield?
This is the song of the sixteen ships to buffet the battle and
gale,
And in every one we have thrown away a Harvard or a Yale.
Behold here the powers of Pittsburg, the mills of Lowell and Lynn,
And the furnaces roar and the boilers seethe, but tell me, what do
they spin?
This is the song of the long, long miles from Hampton to the Horn,
From the Horn away to the western bay whence our guns are proudly
borne.
A flying fleet and a host of hands to carry these rounds of shot!
And behold they have girdled the globe by half, and what is the
gain they have brought?
This is the song of the wasters, ay, defenders, if you please,
Defenders against our fellows, with their wasters even as these,
For we stumble still at the lesson taught since ever the years were
young,
That the chief defense of a nation is to guard its own hand and
tongue.
This is the song of our sinning (for the fault is not theirs, but
ours),
That we chain these slaves to our galley-ships as the symbol of our
powers;
That we clap applause, that we cry hurrahs, that we vent our
unthinking breath,
For oh, we are proud that we flaunt this flesh in the markets of
dismal death.
--_Christian Work and Evangelist._
(3425)