Nevertheless, although from the nature of the occupations which constitute the welfare of her people, as well as from the characteristics of her power, Great Britain seemingly has the larger immediate stake in a prospective interoceanic canal, it has been recognized tacitly on her part, as on our side openly asserted, that the bearing of all questions of Isthmian transit upon our national progress, safety, and honor, is more direct and more urgent than upon hers. That she has felt so is plain from the manner in which she has yielded before our tenacious remonstrances, in cases where the control of the Isthmus was evidently the object of her action,—as in the matters of the tenure of the Bay Islands and of the protectorate of the Mosquito Coast. Our superior interest appears also from the nature of the conditions which will follow from the construction of a canal. So far as these changes are purely commercial, they will operate to some extent to the disadvantage of Great Britain; because the result will be to bring our Atlantic seaboard, the frontier of a rival manufacturing and commercial state, much nearer to the Pacific than it now is, and nearer to many points of that ocean than is England. To make a rough general statement, easily grasped by a reader without the map before him, Liverpool and New York are at present about equidistant, by water, from all points on the west coast of America, from Valparaiso to British Columbia. This is due to the fact that, to go through the Straits of Magellan, vessels from both ports must pass near Cape St. Roque, on the east coast of Brazil, which is nearly the same distance from each. If the Nicaragua Canal existed, the line on the Pacific equidistant from the two cities named would pass, roughly, by Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Melbourne, or along the coasts of Japan, China, and eastern Australia,—Liverpool, in this case, using the Suez Canal, and New York that of Nicaragua. In short, the line of equidistance would be shifted from the eastern shore of the Pacific to its western coast, and all points of that ocean east of Japan, China, and Australia—for example, the Hawaiian Islands—would be nearer to New York than to Liverpool.

A recent British writer has calculated that about one-eighth of the existing trade of the British Islands would be affected unfavorably by the competition thus introduced. But this result, though a matter of national concern, is political only in so far as commercial prosperity or adversity modifies a nation's current history; that is, indirectly. The principal questions affecting the integrity or security of the British Empire are not involved seriously, for almost all of its component parts lie within the regions whose mutual bond of union and shortest line of approach are the Suez Canal. Nowhere has Great Britain so little territory at stake, nowhere has she such scanty possessions, as in the eastern Pacific, upon whose relations to the world at large, and to ourselves in particular, the Isthmian Canal will exert the greatest influence.

The chief political result of the Isthmian Canal will be to bring our Pacific coast nearer, not only to our Atlantic seaboard, but also to the great navies of Europe. Therefore, while the commercial gain, through an uninterrupted water carriage, will be large, and is clearly indicated by the acrimony with which a leading journal, apparently in the interest of the great transcontinental roads, has lately maintained the singular assertion that water transit is obsolete as compared with land carriage, it is still true that the canal will present an element of much weakness from the military point of view. Except to those optimists whose robust faith in the regeneration of human nature rejects war as an impossible contingency, this consideration must occasion serious thought concerning the policy to be adopted by the United States.

The subject, so far, has given rise only to diplomatic arrangement and discussion, within which it is permissible to hope it always may be confined; but the misunderstandings and protracted disputes that followed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and the dissatisfaction with the existing status that still obtains among many of our people, give warning that our steps, as a nation, should be governed by some settled notions, too universally held to be set aside by a mere change of administration or caprice of popular will. Reasonable discussion, which tends, either by its truth or by its evident errors, to clarify and crystallize public opinion on so important a matter, never can be amiss.

This question, from an abstract, speculative phase of the Monroe Doctrine, took on the concrete and somewhat urgent form of security for our trans-Isthmian routes against foreign interference towards the middle of this century, when the attempt to settle it was made by the oft-mentioned Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed April 19, 1850. Great Britain was found then to be in possession, actual or constructive, of certain continental positions, and of some outlying islands, which would contribute not only to military control, but to that kind of political interference which experience has shown to be the natural consequence of the proximity of a strong power to a weak one. These positions depended upon, indeed their tenure originated in, the possession of Jamaica, thus justifying Cromwell's forecast. Of them, the Belize, a strip of coast two hundred miles long, on the Bay of Honduras, immediately south of Yucatan, was so far from the Isthmus proper, and so little likely to affect the canal question, that the American negotiator was satisfied to allow its tenure to pass unquestioned, neither admitting nor denying anything as to the rights of Great Britain thereto. Its first occupation had been by British freebooters, who "squatted" there a very few years after Jamaica fell. They went to cut logwood, succeeded in holding their ground against the efforts of Spain to dislodge them, and their right to occupancy and to fell timber was allowed afterwards by treaty. Since the signature of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, this "settlement," as it was styled in that instrument, has become a British "possession," by a convention with Guatemala contracted in 1859. Later, in 1862, the quondam "settlement" and recent "possession" was erected, by royal commission, into a full colony, subordinate to the government of Jamaica. Guatemala being a Central American state, this constituted a distinct advance of British dominion in Central America, contrary to the terms of our treaty.

A more important claim of Great Britain was to the protectorate of the Mosquito Coast,—a strip understood by her to extend from Cape Gracias a Dios south to the San Juan River. In its origin, this asserted right differed little from similar transactions between civilized man and savages, in all times and all places. In 1687, thirty years after the island was acquired, a chief of the aborigines there settled was carried to Jamaica, received some paltry presents, and accepted British protection. While Spanish control lasted, a certain amount of squabbling and fighting went on between the two nations; but when the questions arose between England and the United States, the latter refused to acquiesce in the so-called protectorate, which rested, in her opinion, upon no sufficient legal ground as against the prior right of Spain, that was held to have passed to Nicaragua when the latter achieved its independence. The Mosquito Coast was too close to the expected canal for its tenure to be considered a matter of indifference. Similar ground was taken with regard to the Bay Islands, Ruatan and others, stretching along the south side of the Bay of Honduras, near the coast of the republic of that name, and so uniting, under the control of the great naval power, the Belize to the Mosquito Coast. The United States maintained that these islands, then occupied by Great Britain, belonged in full right to Honduras.

Under these de facto conditions of British occupation, the United States negotiator, in his eagerness to obtain the recession of the disputed points to the Spanish-American republics, seems to have paid too little regard to future bearings of the subject. Men's minds also were dominated then, as they are now notwithstanding the intervening experience of nearly half a century, by the maxims delivered as a tradition by the founders of the republic who deprecated annexations of territory abroad. The upshot was that, in consideration of Great Britain's withdrawal from Mosquitia and the Bay Islands, to which, by our contention, she had no right, and therefore really yielded nothing but a dispute, we bound ourselves, as did she, without term, to acquire no territory in Central America, and to guarantee the neutrality not only of the contemplated canal, but of any other that might be constructed. A special article, the eighth, was incorporated in the treaty to this effect, stating expressly that the wish of the two governments was "not only to accomplish a particular object, but to establish a general principle."

Considerable delay ensued in the restoration of the islands and of the Mosquito Coast to Honduras and Nicaragua,—a delay attended with prolonged discussion and serious misunderstanding between the United States and Great Britain. The latter claimed that, by the wording of the treaty, she had debarred herself only from future acquisitions of territory in Central America; whereas our government asserted, and persistently instructed its agents, that its understanding had been that an entire abandonment of all possession, present and future, was secured by the agreement. It is difficult, in reading the first article, not to feel that, although the practice may have been perhaps somewhat sharp, the wording can sustain the British position quite as well as the more ingenuous confidence of the United States negotiator; an observation interesting chiefly as showing the eagerness on the one side, whose contention was the weaker in all save right, and the wariness on the other, upon whom present possession and naval power conferred a marked advantage in making a bargain. By 1860, however, the restorations had been made, and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty since then has remained the international agreement, defining our relations to Great Britain on the Isthmus.

Of the subsequent wrangling over this unfortunate treaty, if so invidious a term may be applied to the dignified utterances of diplomacy, it is unnecessary to give a detailed account. Our own country cannot but regret and resent any formal stipulations which fetter its primacy of influence and control on the American continent and in American seas; and the concessions of principle over-eagerly made in 1850, in order to gain compensating advantages which our weakness could not extort otherwise, must needs cause us to chafe now, when we are potentially, though, it must be confessed sorrowfully, not actually, stronger by double than we were then. The interest of Great Britain still lies, as it then lay, in the maintenance of the treaty. So long as the United States jealously resents all foreign interference in the Isthmus, and at the same time takes no steps to formulate a policy or develop a strength that can give shape and force to her own pretensions, just so long will the absolute control over any probable contingency of the future rest with Great Britain, by virtue of her naval positions, her naval power, and her omnipresent capital.

A recent unofficial British estimate of the British policy at the Isthmus, as summarized in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, may here have interest: "In the United States was recognized a coming formidable rival to British trade. In the face of the estimated disadvantage to European trade in general, and that of Great Britain in particular, to be looked for from a Central American canal, British statesmen, finding their last attempt to control the most feasible route (by Nicaragua) abortive, accomplished the next best object in the interest of British trade. They cast the onus of building the canal on the people who would reap the greatest advantage from it, and who were bound to keep every one else out, but were at the same time very unlikely to undertake such a gigantic enterprise outside their own undeveloped territories for many a long year; while at the same time they skilfully handicapped that country in favor of British sea power by entering into a joint guarantee to respect its neutrality when built. This secured postponement of construction indefinitely, and yet forfeited no substantial advantage necessary to establish effective naval control in the interests of British carrying trade."

Whether this passage truly represents the deliberate purpose of successive British governments may be doubtful, but it is an accurate enough estimate of the substantial result, as long as our policy continues to be to talk loud and to do nothing,—to keep others out, while refusing ourselves to go in. We neutralize effectually enough, doubtless; for we neutralize ourselves while leaving other powers to act efficiently whenever it becomes worth while.

In a state like our own, national policy means public conviction, else it is but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. But public conviction is a very different thing from popular impression, differing by all that separates a rational process, resulting in manly resolve, from a weakly sentiment that finds occasional hysterical utterance. The Monroe Doctrine, as popularly apprehended and indorsed, is a rather nebulous generality, which has condensed about the Isthmus into a faint point of more defined luminosity. To those who will regard, it is the harbinger of the day, incompletely seen in the vision of the great discoverer, when the East and the West shall be brought into closer communion by the realization of the strait that baffled his eager search. But, with the strait, time has introduced a factor of which he could not dream,—a great nation midway between the West he knew and the East he sought, spanning the continent he unwittingly found, itself both East and West in one. To such a state, which in itself sums up the two conditions of Columbus's problem; to which the control of the strait is a necessity, if not of existence, at least of its full development and of its national security, who can deny the right to predominate in influence over a region so vital to it? None can deny save its own people; and they do it,—not in words, perhaps, but in act. For let it not be forgotten that failure to act at an opportune moment is action as real as, though less creditable than, the most strenuous positive effort.

Action, however, to be consistent and well proportioned, must depend upon well-settled conviction; and conviction, if it is to be reasonable, and to find expression in a sound and continuous national policy, must result from a careful consideration of present conditions in the light of past experiences. Here, unquestionably, strong differences of opinion will be manifested at first, both as to the true significance of the lessons of the past, and the manner of applying them to the present. Such differences need not cause regret. Their appearance is a sign of attention aroused; and when discussion has become general and animated, we may hope to see the gradual emergence of a sound and operative public sentiment. What is to be deprecated and feared is indolent drifting, in wilful blindness to the approaching moment when action must be taken; careless delay to remove fetters, if such there be in the Constitution or in traditional prejudice, which may prevent our seizing opportunity when it occurs. Whatever be the particular merits of the pending Hawaiian question, it scarcely can be denied that its discussion has revealed the existence, real or fancied, of such clogs upon our action, and of a painful disposition to consider each such occurrence as merely an isolated event, instead of being, as it is, a warning that the time has come when we must make up our minds upon a broad issue of national policy. That there should be two opinions is not bad, but it is very bad to halt long between them.

There is one opinion—which it is needless to say the writer does not share—that, because many years have gone by without armed collision with a great power, the teaching of the past is that none such can occur; and that, in fact, the weaker we are in organized military strength, the more easy it is for our opponents to yield our points. Closely associated with this view is the obstinate rejection of any political action which involves implicitly the projection of our physical power, if needed, beyond the waters that gird our shores. Because our reasonable, natural—it might almost be called moral—claim to preponderant influence at the Isthmus heretofore has compelled respect, though reluctantly conceded, it is assumed that no circumstances can give rise to a persistent denial of it.

It appears to the writer—and to many others with whom he agrees, though without claim to represent them—that the true state of the case is more nearly as follows: Since our nation came into being, a century ago, with the exception of a brief agitation about the year 1850,—due to special causes, which, though suggestive, were not adequate, and summarized as to results in the paralyzing Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,—the importance of the Central American Isthmus has been merely potential and dormant. But, while thus temporarily obscured, its intrinsic conditions of position and conformation bestow upon it a consequence in relation to the rest of the world which is inalienable, and therefore, to become operative, only awaits those changes in external conditions that must come in the fulness of time. The indications of such changes are already sufficiently visible to challenge attention. The rapid peopling of our territory entails at least two. The growth of the Pacific States enhances the commercial and political importance of the Pacific Ocean to the world at large, and to ourselves in particular; while the productive energies of the country, and its advent to the three seas, impel it necessarily to seek outlet by them and access to the regions beyond. Under such conditions, perhaps not yet come, but plainly coming, the consequence of an artificial waterway that shall enable the Atlantic coast to compete with Europe, on equal terms as to distance, for the markets of eastern Asia, and shall shorten by two-thirds the sea route from New York to San Francisco, and by one-half that to Valparaiso, is too evident for insistence.

In these conditions, not in European necessities, is to be found the assurance that the canal will be made. Not to ourselves only, however, though to ourselves chiefly, will it be a matter of interest when completed. Many causes will combine to retain in the line of the Suez Canal the commerce of Europe with the East; but to the American shores of the Pacific the Isthmian canal will afford a much shorter and easier access for a trade already of noteworthy proportions. A weighty consideration also is involved in the effect upon British navigation of a war which should endanger its use of the Suez Canal. The power of Great Britain to control the long route from Gibraltar to the Red Sea is seriously doubted by a large and thoughtful body of her statesmen and seamen, who favor dependence, in war, upon that by the Cape of Good Hope. By Nicaragua, however, would be shorter than by the Cape to many parts of the East; and the Caribbean can be safeguarded against distant European states much more easily than the line through the Mediterranean, which passes close by their ports.

Under this increased importance of the Isthmus, we cannot safely anticipate for the future the cheap acquiescence which, under very different circumstances, has been yielded in the past to our demands. Already it is notorious that European powers are betraying symptoms of increased sensitiveness as to the value of Caribbean positions, and are strengthening their grip upon those they now hold. Moral considerations undoubtedly count for more than they did, and nations are more reluctant to enter into war; but still, the policy of states is determined by the balance of advantages, and it behooves us to know what our policy is to be, and what advantages are needed to turn in our favor the scale of negotiations and the general current of events.

If the decision of the nation, following one school of thought, is that the weaker we are the more likely we are to have our way, there is little to be said. Drifting is perhaps as good a mode as another to reach that desirable goal. If, on the other hand, we determine that our interest and dignity require that our rights should depend upon the will of no other state, but upon our own power to enforce them, we must gird ourselves to admit that freedom of interoceanic transit depends upon predominance in a maritime region—the Caribbean Sea—through which pass all the approaches to the Isthmus. Control of a maritime region is insured primarily by a navy; secondarily, by positions, suitably chosen and spaced one from the other, upon which as bases the navy rests, and from which it can exert its strength. At present the positions of the Caribbean are occupied by foreign powers, nor may we, however disposed to acquisition, obtain them by means other than righteous; but a distinct advance will have been made when public opinion is convinced that we need them, and should not exert our utmost ingenuity to dodge them when flung at our head. If the Constitution really imposes difficulties, it provides also a way by which the people, if convinced, can remove its obstructions. A protest, however, may be entered against a construction of the Constitution which is liberal, by embracing all it can be constrained to imply, and then immediately becomes strict in imposing these ingeniously contrived fetters.

Meanwhile no moral obligation forbids developing our navy upon lines and proportions adequate to the work it may be called upon to do. Here, again, the crippling force is a public impression, which limits our potential strength to the necessities of an imperfectly realized situation. A navy "for defence only" is a popular catchword. When, if ever, people recognize that we have three seaboards, that the communication by water of one of them with the other two will depend in a not remote future upon a strategic position hundreds of miles distant from our nearest port,—the mouth of the Mississippi,—they will see also that the word "defence," already too narrowly understood, has its application at points far away from our own coast.

That the organization of military strength involves provocation to war is a fallacy, which the experience of each succeeding year now refutes. The immense armaments of Europe are onerous; but nevertheless, by the mutual respect and caution they enforce, they present a cheap alternative, certainly in misery, probably in money, to the frequent devastating wars which preceded the era of general military preparation. Our own impunity has resulted, not from our weakness, but from the unimportance to our rivals of the points in dispute, compared with their more immediate interests at home. With the changes consequent upon the canal, this indifference will diminish. We also shall be entangled in the affairs of the great family of nations, and shall have to accept the attendant burdens. Fortunately, as regards other states, we are an island power, and can find our best precedents in the history of the people to whom the sea has been a nursing mother.



POSSIBILITIES OF AN ANGLO-AMERICAN REUNION.

July, 1894.

[The following article was requested by the Editor of the "North American Review," as one of a number, by several persons, dealing with the question of a formal political connection, proposed by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, between the United States and the British Empire, for the advancement of the general interests of the English-speaking peoples. The projects advocated by previous writers embraced: 1, a federate union; 2, a merely naval union or alliance; or, 3, a defensive alliance of a kind frequent in political history.]

The words "kinship" and "alliance" express two radically distinct ideas, and rest, for both the privileges and the obligations involved in them, upon foundations essentially different. The former represents a natural relation, the latter one purely conventional,—even though it may result from the feelings, the mutual interests, and the sense of incumbent duty attendant upon the other. In its very etymology, accordingly, is found implied that sense of constraint, of an artificial bond, that may prove a source, not only of strength, but of irksomeness as well. Its analogue in our social conditions is the marriage tie,—the strongest, doubtless, of all bonds when it realizes in the particular case the supreme affection of which our human nature is capable; but likewise, as daily experience shows, the most fretting when, through original mistake or unworthy motive, love fails, and obligation alone remains.

Personally, I am happy to believe that the gradual but, as I think, unmistakable growth of mutual kindly feelings between Great Britain and the United States during these latter years—and of which the recent articles of Sir George Clarke and Mr. Arthur Silva White in the "North American Review" are pleasant indications—is a sure evidence that a common tongue and common descent are making themselves felt, and are breaking down the barriers of estrangement which have separated too long men of the same blood. There is seen here the working of kinship,—a wholly normal result of a common origin, the natural affection of children of the same descent, who have quarrelled and have been alienated with the proverbial bitterness of civil strife, but who all along have realized—or at the least have been dimly conscious—that such a state of things is wrong and harmful. As a matter of sentiment only, this reviving affection well might fix the serious attention of those who watch the growth of world questions, recognizing how far imagination and sympathy rule the world; but when, besides the powerful sentimental impulse, it is remembered that beneath considerable differences of political form there lie a common inherited political tradition and habit of thought, that the moral forces which govern and shape political development are the same in either people, the possibility of a gradual approach to concerted action becomes increasingly striking. Of all the elements of the civilization that has spread over Europe and America, none is so potential for good as that singular combination of two essential but opposing factors—of individual freedom with subjection to law—which finds its most vigorous working in Great Britain and the United States, its only exponents in which an approach to a due balance has been effected. Like other peoples, we also sway between the two, inclining now to one side, now to the other; but the departure from the normal in either direction is never very great.

There is yet another noteworthy condition common to the two states, which must tend to incline them towards a similar course of action in the future. Partners, each, in the great commonwealth of nations which share the blessings of European civilization, they alone, though in varying degrees, are so severed geographically from all existing rivals as to be exempt from the burden of great land armies; while at the same time they must depend upon the sea, in chief measure, for that intercourse with other members of the body upon which national well-being depends. How great an influence upon the history of Great Britain has been exerted by this geographical isolation is sufficiently understood. In her case the natural tendency has been increased abnormally by the limited territorial extent of the British Islands, which has forced the energies of their inhabitants to seek fields for action outside their own borders; but the figures quoted by Sir George Clarke sufficiently show that the same tendency, arising from the same cause, does exist and is operative in the United States, despite the diversion arising from the immense internal domain not yet fully occupied, and the great body of home consumers which has been secured by the protective system. The geographical condition, in short, is the same in kind, though differing in degree, and must impel in the same direction. To other states the land, with its privileges and its glories, is the chief source of national prosperity and distinction. To Great Britain and the United States, if they rightly estimate the part they may play in the great drama of human progress, is intrusted a maritime interest, in the broadest sense of the word, which demands, as one of the conditions of its exercise and its safety, the organized force adequate to control the general course of events at sea; to maintain, if necessity arise, not arbitrarily, but as those in whom interest and power alike justify the claim to do so, the laws that shall regulate maritime warfare. This is no mere speculation, resting upon a course of specious reasoning, but is based on the teaching of the past. By the exertion of such force, and by the maintenance of such laws, and by these means only, Great Britain, in the beginning of this century, when she was the solitary power of the seas, saved herself from destruction, and powerfully modified for the better the course of history.

With such strong determining conditions combining to converge the two nations into the same highway, and with the visible dawn of the day when this impulse begins to find expression in act, the question naturally arises, What should be the immediate course to be favored by those who hail the growing light, and would hasten gladly the perfect day? That there are not a few who seek a reply to this question is evidenced by the articles of Mr. Carnegie, of Sir George Clarke, and of Mr. White, all appearing within a short time in the pages of the "North American Review." And it is here, I own, that, though desirous as any one can be to see the fact accomplished, I shrink from contemplating it, under present conditions, in the form of an alliance, naval or other. Rather I should say: Let each nation be educated to realize the length and breadth of its own interest in the sea; when that is done, the identity of these interests will become apparent. This identity cannot be established firmly in men's minds antecedent to the great teacher, Experience; and experience cannot be had before that further development of the facts which will follow the not far distant day, when the United States people must again betake themselves to the sea and to external action, as did their forefathers alike in their old home and in the new.

There are, besides, questions in which at present doubt, if not even friction, might arise as to the proper sphere of each nation, agreement concerning which is essential to cordial co-operation; and this the more, because Great Britain could not be expected reasonably to depend upon our fulfilment of the terms of an alliance, or to yield in points essential to her own maritime power, so long as the United States is unwilling herself to assure the security of the positions involved by the creation of an adequate force. It is just because in that process of adjusting the parts to be played by each nation, upon which alone a satisfactory cooperation can be established, a certain amount of friction is probable, that I would avoid all premature striving for alliance, an artificial and possibly even an irritating method of reaching the desired end. Instead, I would dwell continually upon those undeniable points of resemblance in natural characteristics, and in surrounding conditions, which testify to common origin and predict a common destiny. Cast the seed of this thought into the ground, and it will spring and grow up, you know not how,—first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. Then you may put in your sickle and reap the harvest of political result, which as yet is obviously immature. How quietly and unmarked, like the slow processes of nature, such feelings may be wrought into the very being of nations, was evidenced by the sudden and rapid rising of the North at the outbreak of our civil war, when the flag was fired upon at Fort Sumter. Then was shown how deeply had sunk into the popular heart the devotion to the Union and the flag, fostered by long dwelling upon the ideas, by innumerable Fourth of July orations, often doubtless vainglorious, sometimes perhaps grotesque, but whose living force and overwhelming results were vividly apparent, as the fire leaped from hearthstone to hearthstone throughout the Northern States. Equally in the South was apparent how tenacious and compelling was the grip which the constant insistence upon the predominant claim of the State upon individual loyalty had struck into the hearts of her sons. What paper bonds, treaties, or alliances could have availed then to hold together people whose ideals had drifted so far apart, whose interests, as each at that time saw them, had become so opposed?

Although I am convinced firmly that it would be to the interest of Great Britain and the United States, and for the benefit of the world, that the two nations should act together cordially on the seas, I am equally sure that the result not only must be hoped but also quietly waited for, while the conditions upon which such cordiality depends are being realized by men. All are familiar with the idea conveyed by the words "forcing process." There are things that cannot be forced, processes which cannot be hurried, growths which are strong and noble in proportion as they imbibe slowly the beneficent influence of the sun and air in which they are bathed. How far the forcing process can be attempted by an extravagant imagination, and what the inevitable recoil of the mind you seek to take by storm, is amusingly shown by Mr. Carnegie's "Look Ahead," and by the demur thereto of so ardent a champion of Anglo-American alliance—on terms which appear to me to be rational though premature—as Sir George Clarke. A country with a past as glorious and laborious as that of Great Britain, unprepared as yet, as a whole, to take a single step forward toward reunion, is confronted suddenly—as though the temptation must be irresistible—with a picture of ultimate results which I will not undertake to call impossible (who can say what is impossible?), but which certainly deprives the nation of much, if not all, the hard-wrought achievement of centuries. Disunion, loss of national identity, changes of constitution more than radical, the exchange of a world-wide empire for a subordinate part in a great federation,—such may be the destiny of Great Britain in the distant future. I know not; but sure I am, were I a citizen of Great Britain, the prospect would not allure me now to move an inch in such a direction. Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.

The suggestions of Sir George Clarke and of Mr. White are not open to the reproach of repelling those whom they seek to convince. They are clear, plain, business-like propositions, based upon indisputable reasons of mutual advantage, and in the case of the former quickened, as I have the pleasure of knowing through personal acquaintance, by a more than cordial good-will and breadth of view in all that relates to the United States. Avoiding criticism of details—of which I have little to offer—my objection to them is simply that I do not think the time is yet ripe. The ground is not prepared yet in the hearts and understandings of Americans, and I doubt whether in those of British citizens. Both proposals contemplate a naval alliance, though on differing terms. The difficulty is that the United States, as a nation, does not realize or admit as yet that it has any strong interest in the sea; and that the great majority of our people rest firmly in a belief, deep rooted in the political history of our past, that our ambitions should be limited by the three seas that wash our eastern, western, and southern coasts. For myself, I believe that this, once a truth, can be considered so no longer with reference even to the present—much less to a future so near that it scarcely needs a prophet's eye to read; but even if it be but a prejudice, it must be removed before a further step can be taken. In our country national policy, if it is to be steadfast and consistent, must be identical with public conviction. The latter, when formed, may remain long quiescent; but given the appointed time, it will spring to mighty action—aye, to arms—as did the North and the South under their several impulses in 1861.

It is impossible that one who sees in the sea—in the function which it discharges towards the world at large—the most potent factor in national prosperity and in the course of history, should not desire a change in the mental attitude of our countrymen towards maritime affairs. The subject presents itself not merely as one of national importance, but as one concerning the world's history and the welfare of mankind, which are bound up, so far as we can see, in the security and strength of that civilization which is identified with Europe and its offshoots in America. For what, after all, is our not unjustly vaunted European and American civilization? An oasis set in the midst of a desert of barbarism, rent with many intestine troubles, and ultimately dependent, not upon its mere elaboration of organization, but upon the power of that organization to express itself in a menacing and efficient attitude of physical force, sufficient to resist the numerically overwhelming, but inadequately organized hosts of outsiders. Under present conditions these are diked off by the magnificent military organizations of Europe, which also as yet cope successfully with the barbarians within. Of what the latter are capable—at least in will—we have from time to time, and not least of late, terrific warnings, to which men scarcely can shut their eyes and ears; but sufficient attention hardly is paid to the possible dangers from those outside, who are wholly alien to the spirit of our civilization; nor do men realize how essential to the conservation of that civilization is the attitude of armed watchfulness between nations, which is maintained now by the great states of Europe. Even if we leave out of consideration the invaluable benefit to society, in this age of insubordination and anarchy, that so large a number of youth, at the most impressionable age, receive the lessons of obedience, order, respect for authority and law, by which military training conveys a potent antidote to lawlessness, it still would remain a mistake, plausible but utter, to see in the hoped-for subsidence of the military spirit in the nations of Europe a pledge of surer progress of the world towards universal peace, general material prosperity, and ease. That alluring, albeit somewhat ignoble, ideal is not to be attained by the representatives of civilization dropping their arms, relaxing the tension of their moral muscle, and from fighting animals becoming fattened cattle fit only for slaughter.

When Carthage fell, and Rome moved onward, without an equal enemy against whom to guard, to the dominion of the world of Mediterranean civilization, she approached and gradually realized the reign of universal peace, broken only by those intestine social and political dissensions which are finding their dark analogues in our modern times of infrequent war. As the strife between nations of that civilization died away, material prosperity, general cultivation and luxury, flourished, while the weapons dropped nervelessly from their palsied arms. The genius of Caesar, in his Gallic and Germanic campaigns, built up an outside barrier, which, like a dike, for centuries postponed the inevitable end, but which also, like every artificial barrier, gave way when the strong masculine impulse which first created it had degenerated into that worship of comfort, wealth, and general softness, which is the ideal of the peace prophets of to-day. The wave of the invaders broke in,—the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew, and beat upon the house, and it fell, because not founded upon the rock of virile reliance upon strong hands and brave hearts to defend what was dear to them.

Ease unbroken, trade uninterrupted, hardship done away, all roughness removed from life,—these are our modern gods; but can they deliver us, should we succeed in setting them up for worship? Fortunately, as yet we cannot do so. We may, if we will, shut our eyes to the vast outside masses of aliens to our civilization, now powerless because we still, with a higher material development, retain the masculine combative virtues which are their chief possession; but, even if we disregard them, the ground already shakes beneath our feet with physical menace of destruction from within, against which the only security is in constant readiness to contend. In the rivalries of nations, in the accentuation of differences, in the conflict of ambitions, lies the preservation of the martial spirit, which alone is capable of coping finally with the destructive forces that from outside and from within threaten to submerge all the centuries have gained.

It is not then merely, nor even chiefly, a pledge of universal peace that may be seen in the United States becoming a naval power of serious import, with clearly defined external ambitions dictated by the necessities of her interoceanic position; nor yet in the cordial co-operation, as of kindred peoples, that the future may have in store for her and Great Britain. Not in universal harmony, nor in fond dreams of unbroken peace, rest now the best hopes of the world, as involved in the fate of European civilization. Rather in the competition of interests, in that reviving sense of nationality, which is the true antidote to what is bad in socialism, in the jealous determination of each people to provide first for its own, of which the tide of protection rising throughout the world, whether economically an error or not, is so marked a symptom—in these jarring sounds which betoken that there is no immediate danger of the leading peoples turning their swords into ploughshares—are to be heard the assurance that decay has not touched yet the majestic fabric erected by so many centuries of courageous battling. In this same pregnant strife the United States doubtless will be led, by undeniable interests and aroused national sympathies, to play a part, to cast aside the policy of isolation which befitted her infancy, and to recognize that, whereas once to avoid European entanglement was essential to the development of her individuality, now to take her share of the travail of Europe is but to assume an inevitable task, an appointed lot, in the work of upholding the common interests of civilization. Our Pacific slope, and the Pacific colonies of Great Britain, with an instinctive shudder have felt the threat, which able Europeans have seen in the teeming multitudes of central and northern Asia; while their overflow into the Pacific Islands shows that not only westward by land, but also eastward by sea, the flood may sweep. I am not careful, however, to search into the details of a great movement, which indeed may never come, but whose possibility, in existing conditions, looms large upon the horizon of the future, and against which the only barrier will be the warlike spirit of the representatives of civilization. Whate'er betide, Sea Power will play in those days the leading part which it has in all history, and the United States by her geographical position must be one of the frontiers from which, as from a base of operations, the Sea Power of the civilized world will energize.

For this seemingly remote contingency preparation will be made, if men then shall be found prepared, by a practical recognition now of existing conditions—such as those mentioned in the opening of this paper—and acting upon that knowledge. Control of the sea, by maritime commerce and naval supremacy, means predominant influence in the world; because, however great the wealth product of the land, nothing facilitates the necessary exchanges as does the sea. The fundamental truth concerning the sea—perhaps we should rather say the water—is that it is Nature's great medium of communication. It is improbable that control ever again will be exercised, as once it was, by a single nation. Like the pettier interests of the land, it must be competed for, perhaps fought for. The greatest of the prizes for which nations contend, it too will serve, like other conflicting interests, to keep alive that temper of stern purpose and strenuous emulation which is the salt of the society of civilized states, whose unity is to be found, not in a flat identity of conditions—the ideal of socialism—but in a common standard of moral and intellectual ideas.

Also, amid much that is shared by all the nations of European civilization, there are, as is universally recognized, certain radical differences of temperament and character, which tend to divide them into groups having the marked affinities of a common origin. When, as frequently happens on land, the members of these groups are geographically near each other, the mere proximity seems, like similar electricities, to develop repulsions which render political variance the rule and political combination the exception. But when, as is the case with Great Britain and the United States, the frontiers are remote, and contact—save in Canada—too slight to cause political friction, the preservation, advancement, and predominance of the race may well become a political ideal, to be furthered by political combination, which in turn should rest, primarily, not upon cleverly constructed treaties, but upon natural affection and a clear recognition of mutual benefit arising from working together. If the spirit be there, the necessary machinery for its working will not pass the wit of the race to provide; and in the control of the sea, the beneficent instrument that separates us that we may be better friends, will be found the object that neither the one nor the other can master, but which may not be beyond the conjoined energies of the race. When, if ever, an Anglo-American alliance, naval or other, does come, may it be rather as a yielding to irresistible popular impulse than as a scheme, however ingeniously wrought, imposed by the adroitness of statesmen.

We may, however, I think, dismiss from our minds the belief, frequently advanced, and which is advocated so ably by Sir George Clarke, that such mutual support would tend in the future to exempt maritime commerce in general from the harassment which it hitherto has undergone in war. I shall have to try for special clearness here in stating my own views, partly because to some they may appear retrogressive, and also because they may be thought by others to contradict what I have said elsewhere, in more extensive and systematic treatment of this subject.

The alliance which, under one form or another,—either as a naval league, according to Sir George, or as a formal treaty, according to Mr. White,—is advocated by both writers, looks ultimately and chiefly to the contingency of war. True, a leading feature of either proposal is to promote good-will and avert causes of dissension between the two contracting parties; but even this object is sought largely in order that they may stand by each other firmly in case of difficulty with other states. Thus even war may be averted more surely; but, should it come, it would find the two united upon the ocean, consequently all-powerful there, and so possessors of that mastership of the general situation which the sea always has conferred upon its unquestioned rulers. Granting the union of hearts and hands, the supremacy, from my standpoint, logically follows. But why, then, if supreme, concede to an enemy immunity for his commerce? "Neither Great Britain nor America," says Sir George Clarke, though he elsewhere qualifies the statement, "can see in the commerce of other peoples an incentive to attack." Why not? For what purposes, primarily, do navies exist? Surely not merely to fight one another,—to gain what Jomini calls "the sterile glory" of fighting battles in order to win them. If navies, as all agree, exist for the protection of commerce, it inevitably follows that in war they must aim at depriving their enemy of that great resource; nor is it easy to conceive what broad military use they can subserve that at all compares with the protection and destruction of trade. This Sir George indeed sees, for he says elsewhere, "Only on the principle of doing the utmost injury to an enemy, with a view to hasten the issue of war, can commerce-destroying be justified;" but he fails, I think, to appreciate the full importance of this qualifying concession, and neither he nor Mr. White seems to admit the immense importance of commerce-destroying, as such.

The mistake of both, I think, lies in not keeping clearly in view—what both certainly perfectly understand—the difference between the guerre-de-course, which is inconclusive, and commerce-destroying (or commerce prevention) through strategic control of the sea by powerful navies. Some nations more than others, but all maritime nations more or less, depend for their prosperity upon maritime commerce, and probably upon it more than upon any other single factor. Either under their own flag or that of a neutral, either by foreign trade or coasting trade, the sea is the greatest of boons to such a state; and under every form its sea-borne trade is at the mercy of a foe decisively superior.

Is it, then, to be expected that such foe will forego such advantage,—will insist upon spending blood and money in fighting, or money in the vain effort of maintaining a fleet which, having nothing to fight, also keeps its hands off such an obvious means of crippling the opponent and forcing him out of his ports? Great Britain's navy, in the French wars, not only protected her own commerce, but also annihilated that of the enemy; and both conditions—not one alone—were essential to her triumph.

It is because Great Britain's sea power, though still superior, has declined relatively to that of other states, and is no longer supreme, that she has been induced to concede to neutrals the principle that the flag covers the goods. It is a concession wrung from relative weakness—or possibly from a mistaken humanitarianism; but, to whatever due, it is all to the profit of the neutral and to the loss of the stronger belligerent. The only justification, in policy, for its yielding by the latter, is that she can no longer, as formerly, bear the additional burden of hostility, if the neutral should ally himself to the enemy. I have on another occasion said that the principle that the flag covers the goods is forever secured—meaning thereby that, so far as present indications go, no one power would be strong enough at sea to maintain the contrary by arms.

In the same way it may be asserted quite confidently that the concession of immunity to what is unthinkingly called the "private property" of an enemy on the sea, will never be conceded by a nation or alliance confident in its own sea power. It has been the dream of the weaker sea belligerents in all ages; and their arguments for it, at the first glance plausible, are very proper to urge from their point of view. That arch-robber, the first Napoleon, who so remorselessly and exhaustively carried the principle of war sustaining war to its utmost logical sequence, and even in peace scrupled not to quarter his armies on subject countries, maintaining them on what, after all, was simply private property of foreigners,—even he waxes quite eloquent, and superficially most convincing, as he compares the seizure of goods at sea, so fatal to his empire, to the seizure of a wagon travelling an inland country road.

In all these contentions there lies, beneath the surface plausibility, not so much a confusion of thought as a failure to recognize an essential difference of conditions. Even on shore the protection of private property rests upon the simple principle that injury is not to be wanton,—that it is not to be inflicted when the end to be attained is trivial, or largely disproportionate to the suffering caused. For this reason personal property, not embarked in commercial venture, is respected in civilized maritime war. Conversely, as we all know, the rule on land is by no means invariable, and private property receives scant consideration when its appropriation or destruction serves the purposes of an enemy. The man who trudges the highway, cudgel in hand, may claim for his cudgel all the sacredness with which civilization invests property; but if he use it to break his neighbor's head, the respect for his property, as such, quickly disappears. Now, private property borne upon the seas is engaged in promoting, in the most vital manner, the strength and resources of the nation by which it is handled. When that nation becomes belligerent, the private property, so called, borne upon the seas, is sustaining the well-being and endurance of the nation at war, and consequently is injuring the opponent, to an extent exceeding all other sources of national power. In these days of war correspondents, most of us are familiar with the idea of the dependence of an army upon its communications, and we know, vaguely perhaps, but still we know, that to threaten or harm the communications of an army is one of the most common and effective devices of strategy. Why? Because severed from its base an army languishes and dies, and when threatened with such an evil it must fight at whatever disadvantage. Well, is it not clear that maritime commerce occupies, to the power of a maritime state, the precise nourishing function that the communications of an army supply to the army? Blows at commerce are blows at the communications of the state; they intercept its nourishment, they starve its life, they cut the roots of its power, the sinews of its war. While war remains a factor, a sad but inevitable factor, of our history, it is a fond hope that commerce can be exempt from its operations, because in very truth blows against commerce are the most deadly that can be struck; nor is there any other among the proposed uses of a navy, as for instance the bombardment of seaport towns, which is not at once more cruel and less scientific. Blockade such as that enforced by the United States Navy during the Civil War, is evidently only a special phase of commerce-destroying; yet how immense—nay, decisive—its results!

It is only when effort is frittered away in the feeble dissemination of the guerre-de-course, instead of being concentrated in a great combination to control the sea, that commerce-destroying justly incurs the reproach of misdirected effort. It is a fair deduction from analogy, that two contending armies might as well agree to respect each other's communications, as two belligerent states to guarantee immunity to hostile commerce.



THE FUTURE IN RELATION TO AMERICAN NAVAL POWER.

June, 1895.

That the United States Navy within the last dozen years should have been recast almost wholly, upon more modern lines, is not, in itself alone, a fact that should cause comment, or give rise to questions about its future career or sphere of action. If this country needs, or ever shall need, a navy at all, indisputably in 1883 the hour had come when the time-worn hulks of that day, mostly the honored but superannuated survivors of the civil war, should drop out of the ranks, submit to well-earned retirement or inevitable dissolution, and allow their places to be taken by other vessels, capable of performing the duties to which they themselves were no longer adequate.

It is therefore unlikely that there underlay this re-creation of the navy—for such in truth it was—any more recondite cause than the urgent necessity of possessing tools wholly fit for the work which war-ships are called upon to do. The thing had to be done, if the national fleet was to be other than an impotent parody of naval force, a costly effigy of straw. But, concurrently with the process of rebuilding, there has been concentrated upon the development of the new service a degree of attention, greater than can be attributed even to the voracious curiosity of this age of newsmongering and of interviewers. This attention in some quarters is undisguisedly reluctant and hostile, in others not only friendly but expectant, in both cases betraying a latent impression that there is, between the appearance of the new-comer and the era upon which we now are entering, something in common. If such coincidence there be, however, it is indicative not of a deliberate purpose, but of a commencing change of conditions, economical and political, throughout the world, with which sea power, in the broad sense of the phrase, will be associated closely; not, indeed, as the cause, nor even chiefly as a result, but rather as the leading characteristic of activities which shall cease to be mainly internal, and shall occupy themselves with the wider interests that concern the relations of states to the world at large. And it is just at this point that the opposing lines of feeling divide. Those who hold that our political interests are confined to matters within our own borders, and are unwilling to admit that circumstances may compel us in the future to political action without them, look with dislike and suspicion upon the growth of a body whose very existence indicates that nations have international duties as well as international rights, and that international complications will arise from which we can no more escape than the states which have preceded us in history, or those contemporary with us. Others, on the contrary, regarding the conditions and signs of these times, and the extra-territorial activities in which foreign states have embarked so restlessly and widely, feel that the nation, however greatly against its wish, may become involved in controversies not unlike those which in the middle of the century caused very serious friction, but which the generation that saw the century open would have thought too remote for its concern, and certainly wholly beyond its power to influence.

Religious creeds, dealing with eternal verities, may be susceptible of a certain permanency of statement; yet even here we in this day have witnessed the embarrassments of some religious bodies, arising from a traditional adherence to merely human formulas, which reflect views of the truth as it appeared to the men who framed them in the distant past. But political creeds, dealing as they do chiefly with the transient and shifting conditions of a world which is passing away continually, can claim no fixity of allegiance, except where they express, not the policy of a day, but the unchanging dictates of righteousness. And inasmuch as the path of ideal righteousness is not always plain nor always practicable; as expediency, policy, the choice of the lesser evil, must control at times; as nations, like men, will occasionally differ, honestly but irreconcilably, on questions of right,—there do arise disputes where agreement cannot be reached, and where the appeal must be made to force, that final factor which underlies the security of civil society even more than it affects the relations of states. The well-balanced faculties of Washington saw this in his day with absolute clearness. Jefferson either would not or could not. That there should be no navy was a cardinal prepossession of his political thought, born of an exaggerated fear of organized military force as a political, factor. Though possessed with a passion for annexation which dominated much of his political action, he prescribed as the limit of the country's geographical expansion the line beyond which it would entail the maintenance of a navy. Yet fate, ironical here as elsewhere in his administration, compelled the recognition that, unless a policy of total seclusion is adopted,—if even then,—it is not necessary to acquire territory beyond sea in order to undergo serious international complications, which could have been avoided much more easily had there been an imposing armed shipping to throw into the scale of the nation's argument, and to compel the adversary to recognize the impolicy of his course as well as what the United States then claimed to be its wrongfulness.

The difference of conditions between the United States of to-day and of the beginning of this century illustrates aptly how necessary it is to avoid implicit acceptance of precedents, crystallized into maxims, and to seek for the quickening principle which justified, wholly or in part, the policy of one generation, but whose application may insure a very different course of action in a succeeding age. When the century opened, the United States was not only a continental power, as she now is, but she was one of several, of nearly equal strength as far as North America was concerned, with all of whom she had differences arising out of conflicting interests, and with whom, moreover, she was in direct geographical contact,—a condition which has been recognized usually as entailing peculiar proneness to political friction; for, while the interests of two nations may clash in quarters of the world remote from either, there is both greater frequency and greater bitterness when matters of dispute exist near at home, and especially along an artificial boundary, where the inhabitants of each are directly in contact with the causes of the irritation. It was therefore the natural and proper aim of the government of that day to abolish the sources of difficulty, by bringing all the territory in question under our own control, if it could be done by fair means. We consequently entered upon a course of action precisely such as a European continental state would have followed under like circumstances. In order to get possession of the territory in which our interests were involved, we bargained and manoeuvred and threatened; and although Jefferson's methods were peaceful enough, few will be inclined to claim that they were marked by excess of scrupulousness, or even of adherence to his own political convictions. From the highly moral standpoint, the acquisition of Louisiana under the actual conditions—being the purchase from a government which had no right to sell, in defiance of the remonstrance addressed to us by the power who had ceded the territory upon the express condition that it should not so be sold, but which was too weak to enforce its just reclamation against both Napoleon and ourselves—reduces itself pretty much to a choice between overreaching and violence, as the less repulsive means of compassing an end in itself both desirable and proper; nor does the attempt, by strained construction, to wrest West Florida into the bargain give a higher tone to the transaction. As a matter of policy, however, there is no doubt that our government was most wise; and the transfer, as well as the incorporation, of the territory was facilitated by the meagreness of the population that went with the soil. With all our love of freedom, it is not likely that many qualms were felt as to the political inclinations of the people concerning their transfer of allegiance. In questions of great import to nations or to the world, the wishes, or interests, or technical rights, of minorities must yield, and there is not necessarily any more injustice in this than in their yielding to a majority at the polls.

While the need of continental expansion pressed thus heavily upon the statesmen of Jefferson's era, questions relating to more distant interests were very properly postponed. At the time that matters of such immediate importance were pending, to enter willingly upon the consideration of subjects our concern in which was more remote, either in time or place, would have entailed a dissemination of attention and of power that is as greatly to be deprecated in statesmanship as it is in the operations of war. Still, while the government of the day would gladly have avoided such complications, it found, as have the statesmen of all times, that if external interests exist, whatsoever their character, they cannot be ignored, nor can the measures which prudence dictates for their protection be neglected with safety. Without political ambitions outside the continent, the commercial enterprise of the people brought our interests into violent antagonism with clear, unmistakable, and vital interests of foreign belligerent states; for we shall sorely misread the lessons of 1812, and of the events which led to it, if we fail to see that the questions in dispute involved issues more immediately vital to Great Britain, in her then desperate struggle, than they were to ourselves, and that the great majority of her statesmen and people, of both parties, so regarded them. The attempt of our government to temporize with the difficulty, to overcome violence by means of peaceable coercion, instead of meeting it by the creation of a naval force so strong as to be a factor of consideration in the international situation, led us into an avoidable war.

The conditions which now constitute the political situation of the United States, relatively to the world at large, are fundamentally different from those that obtained at the beginning of the century. It is not a mere question of greater growth, of bigger size. It is not only that we are larger, stronger, have, as it were, reached our majority, and are able to go out into the world. That alone would be a difference of degree, not of kind. The great difference between the past and the present is that we then, as regards close contact with the power of the chief nations of the world, were really in a state of political isolation which no longer exists. This arose from our geographical position—reinforced by the slowness and uncertainty of the existing means of intercommunication—and yet more from the grave preoccupation of foreign statesmen with questions of unprecedented and ominous importance upon the continent of Europe. A policy of isolation was for us then practicable,—though even then only partially. It was expedient, also, because we were weak, and in order to allow the individuality of the nation time to accentuate itself. Save the questions connected with the navigation of the Mississippi, collision with other peoples was only likely to arise, and actually did arise, from going beyond our own borders in search of trade. The reasons now evoked by some against our political action outside our own borders might have been used then with equal appositeness against our commercial enterprises. Let us stay at home, or we shall get into trouble. Jefferson, in truth, averse in principle to commerce as to war, was happily logical in his embargo system. It not only punished the foreigner and diminished the danger of international complications, but it kept our own ships out of harm's way; and if it did destroy trade, and cause the grass to grow in the streets of New York, the incident, if inconvenient, had its compensations, by repressing hazardous external activities.

Few now, of course, would look with composure upon a policy, whatever its ground, which contemplated the peaceable seclusion of this nation from its principal lines of commerce. In 1807, however, a great party accepted the alternative rather than fight, or even than create a force which might entail war, although more probably it would have prevented it. But would it be more prudent now to ignore the fact that we are no longer—however much we may regret it—in a position of insignificance or isolation, political or geographical, in any way resembling the times of Jefferson, and that from the changed conditions may result to us a dilemma similar to that which confronted him and his supporters? Not only have we grown,—that is a detail,—but the face of the world is changed, economically and politically. The sea, now as always the great means of communication between nations, is traversed with a rapidity and a certainty that have minimized distances. Events which under former conditions would have been distant and of small concern, now happen at our doors and closely affect us. Proximity, as has been noted, is a fruitful source of political friction, but proximity is the characteristic of the age. The world has grown smaller. Positions formerly distant have become to us of vital importance from their nearness. But, while distances have shortened, they remain for us water distances, and, however short, for political influence they must be traversed in the last resort by a navy, the indispensable instrument by which, when emergencies arise, the nation can project its power beyond its own shore-line.

Whatever seeming justification, therefore, there may have been in the transient conditions of his own day for Jefferson's dictum concerning a navy, rested upon a state of things that no longer obtains, and even then soon passed away. The War of 1812 demonstrated the usefulness of a navy,—not, indeed, by the admirable but utterly unavailing single-ship victories that illustrated its course, but by the prostration into which our seaboard and external communications fell, through the lack of a navy at all proportionate to the country's needs and exposure. The navy doubtless reaped honor in that brilliant sea struggle, but the honor was its own alone; only discredit accrued to the statesmen who, with such men to serve them, none the less left the country open to the humiliation of its harried coasts and blasted commerce. Never was there a more lustrous example of what Jomini calls "the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them." Except for the prestige which at last awoke the country to the high efficiency of the petty force we called our navy, and showed what the sea might be to us, never was blood spilled more uselessly than in the frigate and sloop actions of that day. They presented no analogy to the outpost and reconnoissance fighting, to the detached services, that are not only inevitable but invaluable, in maintaining the morale of a military organization in campaign. They were simply scattered efforts, without relation either to one another or to any main body whatsoever, capable of affecting seriously the issues of war, or, indeed, to any plan of operations worthy of the name.

Not very long after the War of 1812, within the space of two administrations, there came another incident, epoch-making in the history of our external policy, and of vital bearing on the navy, in the enunciation of the Monroe doctrine. That pronouncement has been curiously warped at times from its original scope and purpose. In its name have been put forth theories so much at odds with the relations of states, as hitherto understood, that, if they be maintained seriously, it is desirable in the interests of exact definition that their supporters advance some other name for them. It is not necessary to attribute finality to the Monroe doctrine, any more than to any other political dogma, in order to deprecate the application of the phrase to propositions that override or transcend it. We should beware of being misled by names, and especially where such error may induce a popular belief that a foreign state is outraging wilfully a principle to the defence of which the country is committed. We have been committed to the Monroe doctrine itself, not perhaps by any such formal assumption of obligations as cannot be evaded, but by certain precedents, and by a general attitude, upon the whole consistently maintained, from which we cannot recede silently without risk of national mortification. If seriously challenged, as in Mexico by the third Napoleon, we should hardly decline to emulate the sentiments so nobly expressed by the British government, when, in response to the emperors of Russia and France, it declined to abandon the struggling Spanish patriots to the government set over them by Napoleon: "To Spain his Majesty is not bound by any formal instrument; but his Majesty has, in the face of the world, contracted with that nation engagements not less sacred, and not less binding upon his Majesty's mind, than the most solemn treaties." We may have to accept also certain corollaries which may appear naturally to result from the Monroe doctrine, but we are by no means committed to some propositions which lately have been tallied with its name. Those propositions possibly embody a sound policy, more applicable to present conditions than the Monroe doctrine itself, and therefore destined to succeed it; but they are not the same thing. There is, however, something in common between it and them. Reduced to its barest statement, and stripped of all deductions, natural or forced, the Monroe doctrine, if it were not a mere political abstraction, formulated an idea to which in the last resort effect could be given only through the instrumentality of a navy; for the gist of it, the kernel of the truth, was that the country had at that time distant interests on the land, political interests of a high order in the destiny of foreign territory, of which a distinguishing characteristic was that they could be assured only by sea.

Like most stages in a nation's progress, the Monroe doctrine, though elicited by a particular political incident, was not an isolated step unrelated to the past, but a development. It had its antecedents in feelings which arose before our War of Independence, and which in 1778, though we were then in deadly need of the French alliance, found expression in the stipulation that France should not attempt to regain Canada. Even then, and also in 1783, the same jealousy did not extend to the Floridas, which at the latter date were ceded by Great Britain to Spain; and we expressly acquiesced in the conquest of the British West India Islands by our allies. From that time to 1815 no remonstrance was made against the transfer of territories in the West Indies and Caribbean Sea from one belligerent to another—an indifference which scarcely would be shown at the present time, even though the position immediately involved were intrinsically of trivial importance; for the question at stake would be one of principle, of consequences, far reaching as Hampden's tribute of ship-money.

It is beyond the professional province of a naval officer to inquire how far the Monroe doctrine itself would logically carry us, or how far it may be developed, now or hereafter, by the recognition and statement of further national interests, thereby formulating another and wider view of the necessary range of our political influence. It is sufficient to quote its enunciation as a fact, and to note that it was the expression of a great national interest, not merely of a popular sympathy with South American revolutionists; for, had it been the latter, it would doubtless have proved as inoperative and evanescent as declarations arising from such emotions commonly are. From generation to generation we have been much stirred by the sufferings of Greeks, or Bulgarians, or Armenians, at the hands of Turkey; but, not being ourselves injuriously affected, our feelings have not passed into acts, and for that very reason have been ephemeral. No more than other nations are we exempt from the profound truth enunciated by Washington—seared into his own consciousness by the bitter futilities of the French alliance in 1778 and the following years, and by the extravagant demands based upon it by the Directory during his Presidential term—that it is absurd to expect governments to act upon disinterested motives. It is not as an utterance of passing concern, benevolent or selfish, but because it voiced an enduring principle of necessary self-interest, that the Monroe doctrine has retained its vitality, and has been made so easily to do duty as the expression of intuitive national sensitiveness to occurrences of various kinds in regions beyond the sea. At its christening the principle was directed against an apprehended intervention in American affairs, which depended not upon actual European concern in the territory involved, but upon a purely political arrangement between certain great powers, itself the result of ideas at the time moribund. In its first application, therefore, it was a confession that danger of European complications did exist, under conditions far less provocative of real European interest than those which now obtain and are continually growing. Its subsequent applications have been many and various, and the incidents giving rise to them have been increasingly important, culminating up to the present in the growth of the United States to be a great Pacific power, and in her probable dependence in the near future upon an Isthmian canal for the freest and most copious intercourse between her two ocean seaboards. In the elasticity and flexibleness with which the dogma thus has accommodated itself to varying conditions, rather than in the strict wording of the original statement, is to be seen the essential characteristic of a living principle—the recognition, namely, that not merely the interests of individual citizens, but the interests of the United States as a nation, are bound up with regions beyond the sea, not part of our own political domain, in which therefore, under some imaginable circumstances, we may be forced to take action.

It is important to recognize this, for it will help clear away the error from a somewhat misleading statement frequently made,—that the United States needs a navy for defence only, adding often, explanatorily, for the defence of our own coasts. Now in a certain sense we all want a navy for defence only. It is to be hoped that the United States will never seek war except for the defence of her rights, her obligations, or her necessary interests. In that sense our policy may always be defensive only, although it may compel us at times to steps justified rather by expediency—the choice of the lesser evil—than by incontrovertible right. But if we have interests beyond sea which a navy may have to protect, it plainly follows that the navy has more to do, even in war, than to defend the coast; and it must be added as a received military axiom that war, however defensive in moral character, must be waged aggressively if it is to hope for success.

For national security, the correlative of a national principle firmly held and distinctly avowed is, not only the will, but the power to enforce it. The clear expression of national purpose, accompanied by evident and adequate means to carry it into effect, is the surest safeguard against war, provided always that the national contention is maintained with a candid and courteous consideration of the rights and susceptibilities of other states. On the other hand, no condition is more hazardous than that of a dormant popular feeling, liable to be roused into action by a moment of passion, such as that which swept over the North when the flag was fired upon at Sumter, but behind which lies no organized power for action. It is on the score of due preparation for such an ultimate contingency that nations, and especially free nations, are most often deficient. Yet, if wanting in definiteness of foresight and persistency of action, owing to the inevitable frequency of change in the governments that represent them, democracies seem in compensation to be gifted with an instinct, the result perhaps of the free and rapid interchange of thought by which they are characterized, that intuitively and unconsciously assimilates political truths, and prepares in part for political action before the time for action has come. That the mass of United States citizens do not realize understandingly that the nation has vital political interests beyond the sea is probably true; still more likely is it that they are not tracing any connection between them and the reconstruction of the navy. Yet the interests exist, and the navy is growing; and in the latter fact is the best surety that no breach of peace will ensue from the maintenance of the former.

It is, not, then the indication of a formal political purpose, far less of anything like a threat, that is, from my point of view, to be recognized in the recent development of the navy. Nations, as a rule, do not move with the foresight and the fixed plan which distinguish a very few individuals of the human race. They do not practise on the pistol-range before sending a challenge; if they did, wars would be fewer, as is proved by the present long-continued armed peace in Europe. Gradually and imperceptibly the popular feeling, which underlies most lasting national movements, is aroused and swayed by incidents, often trivial, but of the same general type, whose recurrence gradually moulds public opinion and evokes national action, until at last there issues that settled public conviction which alone, in a free state, deserves the name of national policy. What the origin of those particular events whose interaction establishes a strong political current in a particular direction, it is perhaps unprofitable to inquire. Some will see in the chain of cause and effect only a chapter of accidents, presenting an interesting philosophical study, and nothing more; others, equally persuaded that nations do not effectively shape their mission in the world, will find in them the ordering of a Divine ruler, who does not permit the individual or the nation to escape its due share of the world's burdens. But, however explained, it is a common experience of history that in the gradual ripening of events there comes often suddenly and unexpectedly the emergency, the call for action, to maintain the nation's contention. That there is an increased disposition on the part of civilized countries to deal with such cases by ordinary diplomatic discussion and mutual concession can be gratefully acknowledged; but that such dispositions are not always sufficient to reach a peaceable solution is equally an indisputable teaching of the recent past. Popular emotion, once fairly roused, sweeps away the barriers of calm deliberation, and is deaf to the voice of reason. That the consideration of relative power enters for much in the diplomatic settlement of international difficulties is also certain, just as that it goes for much in the ordering of individual careers. "Can," as well as "will," plays a large share in the decisions of life.

Like each man and woman, no state lives to itself alone, in a political seclusion resembling the physical isolation which so long was the ideal of China and Japan. All, whether they will or no, are members of a community, larger or, smaller; and more and more those of the European family to which we racially belong are touching each other throughout the world, with consequent friction of varying degree. That the greater rapidity of communication afforded by steam has wrought, in the influence of sea power over the face of the globe, an extension that is multiplying the points of contact and emphasizing the importance of navies, is a fact, the intelligent appreciation of which is daily more and more manifest in the periodical literature of Europe, and is further shown by the growing stress laid upon that arm of military strength by foreign governments; while the mutual preparation of the armies on the European continent, and the fairly settled territorial conditions, make each state yearly more wary of initiating a contest, and thus entail a political quiescence there, except in the internal affairs of each country. The field of external action for the great European states is now the world, and it is hardly doubtful that their struggles, unaccompanied as yet by actual clash of arms, are even under that condition drawing nearer to ourselves. Coincidently with our own extension to the Pacific Ocean, which for so long had a good international claim to its name, that sea has become more and more the scene of political development, of commercial activities and rivalries, in which all the great powers, ourselves included, have a share. Through these causes Central and Caribbean America, now intrinsically unimportant, are brought in turn into great prominence, as constituting the gateway between the Atlantic and Pacific when the Isthmian canal shall have been made, and as guarding the approaches to it. The appearance of Japan as a strong ambitious state, resting on solid political and military foundations, but which scarcely has reached yet a condition of equilibrium in international standing, has fairly startled the world; and it is a striking illustration of the somewhat sudden nearness and unforeseen relations into which modern states are brought, that the Hawaiian Islands, so interesting from the international point of view to the countries of European civilization, are occupied largely by Japanese and Chinese.

In all these questions we have a stake, reluctantly it may be, but necessarily, for our evident interests are involved, in some instances directly, in others by very probable implication. Under existing conditions, the opinion that we can keep clear indefinitely of embarrassing problems is hardly tenable; while war between two foreign states, which in the uncertainties of the international situation throughout the world may break out at any time, will increase greatly the occasions of possible collision with the belligerent countries, and the consequent perplexities of our statesmen seeking to avoid entanglement and to maintain neutrality.

Although peace is not only the avowed but for the most part the actual desire of European governments, they profess no such aversion to distant political enterprises and colonial acquisitions as we by tradition have learned to do. On the contrary, their committal to such divergent enlargements of the national activities and influence is one of the most pregnant facts of our time, the more so that their course is marked in the case of each state by a persistence of the same national traits that characterized the great era of colonization, which followed the termination of the religious wars in Europe, and led to the world-wide contests of the eighteenth century. In one nation the action is mainly political,—that of a government pushed, by long-standing tradition and by its passion for administration, to extend the sphere of its operations so as to acquire a greater field in which to organize and dominate, somewhat regardless of economical advantage. In another the impulse comes from the restless, ubiquitous energy of the individual citizens, singly or in companies, moved primarily by the desire of gain, but carrying ever with them, subordinate only to the commercial aim, the irresistible tendency of the race to rule as well as to trade, and dragging the home government to recognize and to assume the consequences of their enterprise. Yet again there is the movement whose motive is throughout mainly private and mercantile, in which the individual seeks wealth only, with little or no political ambition, and where the government intervenes chiefly that it may retain control of its subjects in regions where but for such intervention they would become estranged from it. But, however diverse the modes of operation, all have a common characteristic, in that they bear the stamp of the national genius,—a proof that the various impulses are not artificial, but natural, and that they therefore will continue until an adjustment is reached.

What the process will be, and what the conclusion, it is impossible to foresee; but that friction at times has been very great, and matters dangerously near passing from the communications of cabinets to the tempers of the peoples, is sufficiently known. If, on the one hand, some look upon this as a lesson to us to keep clear of similar adventures, on the other hand it gives a warning that not only do causes of offence exist which may result at an unforeseen moment in a rupture extending to many parts of the world, but also that there is a spirit abroad which yet may challenge our claim to exclude its action and interference in any quarter, unless it finds us prepared there in adequate strength to forbid it, or to exercise our own. More and more civilized man is needing and seeking ground to occupy, room over which to expand and in which to live. Like all natural forces, the impulse takes the direction of least resistance, but when in its course it comes upon some region rich in possibilities, but unfruitful through the incapacity or negligence of those who dwell therein, the incompetent race or system will go down, as the inferior race ever has fallen back and disappeared before the persistent impact of the superior. The recent and familiar instance of Egypt is entirely in point. The continuance of the existing system—if it can be called such—had become impossible, not because of the native Egyptians, who had endured the like for ages, but because there were involved therein the interests of several European states, of which two principally were concerned by present material interest and traditional rivalry. Of these one, and that the one most directly affected, refused to take part in the proposed interference, with the result that this was not abandoned, but carried out solely by the other, which remains in political and administrative control of the country. Whether the original enterprise or the continued presence of Great Britain in Egypt is entirely clear of technical wrongs, open to the criticism of the pure moralist, is as little to the point as the morality of an earthquake; the general action was justified by broad considerations of moral expediency, being to the benefit of the world at large, and of the people of Egypt in particular—however they might have voted in the matter.

But what is chiefly instructive in this occurrence is the inevitableness, which it shares in common with the great majority of cases where civilized and highly organized peoples have trespassed upon the technical rights of possession of the previous occupants of the land—of which our own dealings with the American Indian afford another example. The inalienable rights of the individual are entitled to a respect which they unfortunately do not always get; but there is no inalienable right in any community to control the use of a region when it does so to the detriment of the world at large, of its neighbors in particular, or even at times of its own subjects. Witness, for example, the present angry resistance of the Arabs at Jiddah to the remedying of a condition of things which threatens to propagate a deadly disease far and wide, beyond the locality by which it is engendered; or consider the horrible conditions under which the Armenian subjects of Turkey have lived and are living. When such conditions obtain, they can be prolonged only by the general indifference or mutual jealousies of the other peoples concerned—as in the instance of Turkey—or because there is sufficient force to perpetuate the misrule, in which case the right is inalienable only until its misuse brings ruin, or until a stronger force appears to dispossess it. It is because so much of the world still remains in the possession of the savage, or of states whose imperfect development, political or economical, does not enable them to realize for the general use nearly the result of which the territory is capable, while at the same time the redundant energies of civilized states, both government and peoples, are finding lack of openings and scantiness of livelihood at home, that there now obtains a condition of aggressive restlessness with which all have to reckon.

That the United States does not now share this tendency is entirely evident. Neither her government nor her people are affected by it to any great extent. But the force of circumstances has imposed upon her the necessity, recognized with practical unanimity by her people, of insuring to the weaker states of America, although of racial and political antecedents different from her own, freedom to develop politically along their own lines and according to their own capacities, without interference in that respect from governments foreign to these continents. The duty is self-assumed; and resting, as it does, not upon political philanthropy, but simply upon our own proximate interests as affected by such foreign interference, has towards others rather the nature of a right than a duty. But, from either point of view, the facility with which the claim has been allowed heretofore by the great powers has been due partly to the lack of pressing importance in the questions that have arisen, and partly to the great latent strength of our nation, which was an argument more than adequate to support contentions involving matters of no greater immediate moment, for example, than that of the Honduras Bay Islands or of the Mosquito Coast. Great Britain there yielded, it is true, though reluctantly and slowly; and it is also true that, so far as organized force is concerned, she could have destroyed our navy then existing and otherwise have injured us greatly; but the substantial importance of the question, though real, was remote in the future, and, as it was, she made a political bargain which was more to her advantage than ours. But while our claim thus far has received a tacit acquiescence, it remains to be seen whether it will continue to command the same if the states whose political freedom of action we assert make no more decided advance towards political stability than several of them have done yet, and if our own organized naval force remains as slender, comparatively, as it once was, and even yet is. It is probably safe to say that an undertaking like that of Great Britain in Egypt, if attempted in this hemisphere by a non-American state, would not be tolerated by us if able to prevent it; but it is conceivable that the moral force of our contention might be weakened, in the view of an opponent, by attendant circumstances, in which case our physical power to support it should be open to no doubt.

That we shall seek to secure the peaceable solution of each difficulty as it arises is attested by our whole history, and by the disposition of our people; but to do so, whatever the steps taken in any particular case, will bring us into new political relations and may entail serious disputes with other states. In maintaining the justest policy, the most reasonable influence, one of the political elements, long dominant, and still one of the most essential, is military strength—in the broad sense of the word "military," which includes naval as well—not merely potential, which our own is, but organized and developed, which our own as yet is not. We wisely quote Washington's warning against entangling alliances, but too readily forget his teaching about preparation for war. The progress of the world from age to age, in its ever-changing manifestations, is a great political drama, possessing a unity, doubtless, in its general development, but in which, as act follows act, one situation alone can engage, at one time, the attention of the actors. Of this drama war is simply a violent and tumultuous political incident. A navy, therefore, whose primary sphere of action is war, is, in the last analysis and from the least misleading point of view, a political factor of the utmost importance in international affairs, one more often deterrent than irritant. It is in that light, according to the conditions of the age and of the nation, that it asks and deserves the appreciation of the state, and that it should be developed in proportion to the reasonable possibilities of the political future.



PREPAREDNESS FOR NAVAL WAR.

December, 1896.

The problem of preparation for war in modern times is both extensive and complicated. As in the construction of the individual ship, where the attempt to reconcile conflicting requirements has resulted, according to a common expression, in a compromise, the most dubious of all military solutions,—giving something to all, and all to none,—so preparation for war involves many conditions, often contradictory one to another, at times almost irreconcilable. To satisfy all of these passes the ingenuity of the national Treasury, powerless to give the whole of what is demanded by the representatives of the different elements, which, in duly ordered proportion, constitute a complete scheme of national military policy, whether for offence or defence. Unable to satisfy all, and too often equally unable to say, frankly, "This one is chief; to it you others must yield, except so far as you contribute to its greatest efficiency," either the pendulum of the government's will swings from one extreme to the other, or, in the attempt to be fair all round, all alike receive less than they ask, and for their theoretical completeness require. In other words, the contents of the national purse are distributed, instead of being concentrated upon a leading conception, adopted after due deliberation, and maintained with conviction.

The creation of material for war, under modern conditions, requires a length of time which does not permit the postponement of it to the hour of impending hostilities. To put into the water a first-class battle-ship, fully armored, within a year after the laying of her keel, as has been done latterly in England, is justly considered an extraordinary exhibition of the nation's resources for naval shipbuilding; and there yet remained to be done the placing of her battery, and many other matters of principal detail essential to her readiness for sea. This time certainly would not be less for ourselves, doing our utmost.