Atlantic Health, Wealth and Sanity : 453 



A part of the success and economy of ocean transport arises from 

 the ships and the other concrete inventions that we have mentioned 

 above but a part arises also from ideas that have grown up both on 

 the sea and ashore. Among these are the services of insurance to cover 

 losses either of the ship or its cargo; the idea of economy to be won 

 by regularity and speed of service; the idea of massed transport which 

 is naturally connected with the development ashore of mass produc- 

 tion. 



Clearly these are all related in a way to our fundamental beliefs 

 in the virtues and advantages of a free economy. EfFective low-cost 

 ocean transport is thus pardy a product of our industrial and eco- 

 nomic system but at the same time it is a peaceful contributor to the 

 success of these systems. In peace and in war it is a major element in 

 supplying raw materials at reasonable cost and distributing products 

 to profitable markets. 



Finally, these ocean services are also an expression of prevailing 

 ideas and philosophies. Into these services have entered the movements 

 for the protection of the rights of seamen beginning with their free- 

 dom from impressment on the high seas and the idea of the free use 

 of the open oceans as highways for international commerce. Freedom 

 of the seamen and freedom of the seas are ideas that could only have 

 grown up in a community of nations that valued their national and 

 individual liberty on the seas as well as ashore. 



About the Atlantic economic freedom and political freedom have 

 grown hand-in-hand. About the Atlantic representative government 

 and democratic institutions have had their origin and their longest 

 periods of development and trial. It may be significant that Iceland, 

 situated on an island in the very middle of the Atlantic, has been 

 governed by the Althing, the oldest representative deliberative body, 

 with a record of unbroken service that now runs well over 1,000 

 years. 



An examination of the Atlandc story shows that there has grown 

 up about this ocean a group of nations that have many characteristics 

 in common: They have participated in successive waves of migra- 

 tion and colonization; they have sought the same types of political 

 and personal liberty; they have developed farm lands and utilized 

 natural resources; established productive industries; built up across 

 the Atlantic lines of communication, of travel and of trade. Likewise 

 in philosophy and science, in literature and the arts, they have 

 exchanged ideas back and forth across the Atlantic and up and down 

 its length. 



