The Fleet by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 20, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 21.

The Fleet

By Editor

The Fleet.—When this paper reaches our readers, the great fleet celebration will be over in the city by the Golden Gate. Looking at it from the world's standpoint, the great pageant was a success. The eighteen immense floating forts filed in the bay of San Francisco with precision and dignity, amid the thunder of guns, and the shouts and cheers from thousands and thousands of voices. There were probably five or six hundred thousand people in San Francisco on May 6. Many of these will stay thru-out the ten days, and many others will come. It was a great honor to Rear-Admiral Evans to be able to bring the fleet into the bay. He immediately laid down these honors, and they were placed on Rear-Admiral Thomas. He will soon yield them again to Rear-Admiral Sperry. There are those who fondly solace themselves that great preparation for war means a continuance of peace. That would be true if but one nation were preparing for war, but the preparation is becoming world-wide, and military men are becoming like unleashed hounds eager for the chase.

Where there is a preparedness for war on the part of all the nations, there is bound to be, sooner or later, a test of strength; and the Scriptures abundantly assure us that out of just such conditions as these will grow world-wide war, leading up to the great battle of Armageddon, beyond which is to come the glorious return of Christ to this earth. What a pageant that will be; not merely leading eighteen battle-ships on a fourteen-thousand-mile cruise, but leading all the hosts of heaven to a world marred by sin, and gathering from that world the faithful of all ages, giving to them eternal life, fitting them for an eternal home. All the great martial, royal, state events of history sink into insignificance compared with this.