Also, during the same generation, each Christian Government has played with its neighbors a continuous poker game, in the naval line. In this game France puts up a battleship; England sees that battleship, and goes it one battleship better; Russia comes in and raises it a battleship or two—did, before the untaught stranger entered the game and reduced her stately pile of chips to a damaged ferry-boat and a cruiser that can’t cruise. We are in it, ourselves, now. This game goes on, and on, and on. There is never a new shuffle; never a new deal. No player ever calls another’s hand. It is merely
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