This may seem absurd, and perhaps it is; but why? The comparison is not between the qualities of the men or between the results achieved. Great results often are brought about by very small forces, as when some state of equilibrium is disturbed, and vice versa. The comparison attempted is simply between the power of a certain army and the power of a certain fleet. And while it is true that, for some purposes, such as overcoming small resistance, great power may not be as efficacious as feeble power or even gentleness, yet, nevertheless, it must be clear that, for the overcoming of great resistance quickly great power must be applied.

The existence of a certain power is quite independent of the desirability of using it. The existence of the power is all the writer wishes to insist upon at present; the question of its employment will be considered later.

Not only is the power of a fleet immeasurably greater than that of an army, but it must always be so, from the very nature of things. The speed of an army, while exercising the functions of an army, and the power of a musket, while exercising its functions as a weapon of one soldier, cannot change much from what they were when Sherman went marching through Georgia. But, thanks to mechanical science, there is no limit in sight to the power to which a fleet may attain.

The power of a navy is of recent growth, but it is increasing and is going to continue to increase. Every advance of civilization will advance the navy. Every new discovery and invention will directly or indirectly serve it. The navy, more than any other thing, will give opportunity for mechanism and to mechanism. Far beyond any possible imagination of to-day, it will become the highest expression of the Genius of Mechanism, and the embodiment of its spirit.

The amount of money now being spent by the United States on its navy is so great that the expenditure can be justified only on the basis that great naval power is essential to the country.

Is it essential, and if so, why?

Primary Use for a Navy.—To answer this wisely, it may be well to remind ourselves that the principal object of all the vocations of men is directly or indirectly the acquiring of money. Money, of course, is not wealth; but it is a thing which can be so easily exchanged for wealth, that it is the thing which most people work for. Of course, at bottom, the most important work is the getting of food out of the ground; but inasmuch as people like to congregate together in cities, the thing taken out of the ground in one place must be transported to other places; and inasmuch as every person wants every kind of thing that he can get, a tremendous system of interchange, through the medium of money, has been brought about, which is called "trade." For the protection of property and life, and in order that trade may exist at all, an enormous amount of human machinery is employed which we call "government." This government is based on innumerable laws, but these laws would be of no avail unless they were carried out; and every nation in the world has found that employment of a great deal of force is necessary in order that they shall be carried out. This force is mainly exercised by the police of the cities; but many instances have occurred in the history of every country where the authority of the police has had to be supported by the army of the national government. There is no nation in the world, and there never has been one, in which the enforcement of the necessary laws for the protection of the lives, property, and trade of the people has not depended ultimately on the army; and the reason why the army could enforce the laws was simply the fact that the army had the power to inflict suffering and death.

As long as a maritime country carried on trade within its own borders exclusively, as long as it lived within itself, so long as its people did not go to countries oversea, a navy was not necessary. But when a maritime country is not contented to live within its own borders, then a navy becomes essential to guard its people and their possessions on the highways of the sea; to enforce, not municipal or national law, as an army does, but international law.

Now the desire of the people of a country to extend their trade beyond the seas seems in some ways not always a conscious desire, not a deliberate intent, but to be an effort of self-protection, or largely an effort of expansion; for getting room or employment. As the people of a country become civilized, labor-saving devices multiply; and where one man by means of a machine can do the work of a hundred, ninety-nine men may be thrown out of employment; out of a hundred men who till the soil, only one man may be selected and ninety-nine men have to seek other employment. Where shall it be gotten? Evidently it must be gotten in some employment which may be called "artificial," such as working in a shop of some kind, or doing some manufacturing work. But so long as a people live unto themselves only, each nation can practically make and use all the machinery needed within its borders, and still not employ all the idle hands; and when the population becomes dense, employment must be sought in making goods to sell beyond the sea. The return comes back, sometimes in money, sometimes in the products of the soil and the mine and the manufactures of foreign lands.

In this way every nation becomes like a great business firm. It exports (that is, sells,) certain things, and it imports (that is, buys,) certain things; and if it sells more than it buys it is making money; if it buys more than it sells it is spending money. This is usually expressed by saying that the "balance of trade" is in its favor or against it.

In a country like the United States, or any other great nation, the amount of exporting and importing, of buying and selling almost every conceivable article under the sun, is carried on in the millions and millions of dollars; and so perfect has the organization for doing this business become in every great country, that the products of the most distant countries can be bought in almost every village; and any important event in any country produces a perceptible effect wherever the mail and telegraph go.

The organization for effecting this in every country is so excellent and so wonderful, that it is like a machine.

In fact, it is a machine, and with all the faults of a machine. Now one of the faults of a machine, a fault which increases in importance with the complexity of the machine, is the enormous disturbance which may be produced by a cause seemingly trivial. That such is the case with the machine which the commerce of every great nation comprises, every-day experience confirms. So long as the steamers come and go with scheduled regularity, so long will the money come in at the proper intervals and be distributed through the various channels; so long will the people live the lives to which they are habituated; so long will order reign.

But suppose the coming and going of all the steamers were suddenly stopped by a blockade. While it may be true that, in a country like the United States, no foreign trade is really necessary; while it may be true that the people of the United States would be just as happy, though not so rich, if they had no foreign trade—yet the sudden stoppage of foreign trade would not bring about a condition such as would have existed if we had never had any foreign trade, but would bring about a chaotic condition which cannot fitly be described by a feebler word than "horrible." The whole machinery of every-day life would be disabled. Hundreds of thousands of people would be thrown out of employment, and the whole momentum of the rapidly moving enormous mass of American daily life would receive a violent shock which would strain to its elastic limit every part of the entire machine.

It would take a large book to describe what would ensue from the sudden stoppage of the trade of the United States with countries over the sea. Such a book would besides be largely imaginative; because in our history such a condition has never yet arisen. Although wars have happened in the past in which there has been a blockade of our coast more or less complete, peace has been declared before the suffering produced had become very acute; and furthermore the conditions of furious trade which now exist have never existed before. Disasters would ensue, apart from the actual loss of money, owing simply to the sudden change. In a railroad-train standing still or moving at a uniform speed, the passengers are comfortable; but if that same train is suddenly brought to rest when going at a high speed, say by collision, the consequences are horrible in the extreme, and the horror is caused simply by the suddenness of the change. The same is true all through nature and human nature. Any sudden change in the velocity of any mass has its exact counterpart in any sudden change in the conditions of living of any man or woman, or any sudden change in the conditions under which any organization must carry on its business. The difficulty is not with individuals only, or with the organizations themselves, and does not rest solely on the personal inability of people to accommodate themselves to the losing of certain conveniences or luxuries; but it is an inertia which resists even the strenuous efforts of individuals and organizations to meet new situations promptly, and to grapple effectively with new problems.

Every organization, no matter how small, is conducted according to some system, and that system is based upon certain more or less permanent conditions, which, if suddenly changed, make the system inapplicable. The larger the organization and the more complex it is, the more will it be deranged by any change of external conditions and the longer time will it take to adapt itself to them.

The sudden stoppage of our sea trade, including our coasting trade, by even a partial blockade of our ports, would change practically all the conditions under which we live. There is hardly a single organization in the country which would not be affected by it. And, as every organization would know that every other organization would be affected, but to a degree which could not possibly be determined, because there would be no precedent, it cannot be an exaggeration to declare that the blockading of our principal ports would, entirely apart from direct loss of money and other commodities, produce a state of confusion, out of which order could not possibly be evolved except by the raising of the blockade.

In addition to the confusion brought about, there would, of course, be the direct loss of money and non-receipt of imported things; but what would probably be the very worst thing of all would be the numbers of men thrown out of employment by the loss of foreign markets. So long as a country can keep its people in employment, so long the people will live in comparative order. But when there are many unemployed men in a country, not only do their families lose the means of subsistence, but the very fact of the men being unemployed leads them into mischief. Should the ports of any great commercial nation be suddenly closed, the greatest danger to the country would not be from the enemy outside, but from the unemployed people inside, unless the government gave them employment, by enlisting them in an enormous, improvised army.

It will be seen, therefore, that the blockading of the principal ports of any purely commercial country would be a disaster so great that there could not be a greater one except actual invasion. Another disaster might be the total destruction of its fleet by the enemy's fleet; but the only direct result of this would be that the people of the country would have fewer ships to support and fewer men to pay. The loss of the fleet and the men would not per se be any loss whatever to the country, but rather a gain. The loss of the fleet, however, would make it possible for the enemy's fleet to blockade our ports later, and thus bring about the horrors of which we have spoken.

While it is true that an absolute blockade of any port might be practically impossible at the present day, while it is true that submarines and torpedo-boats might compel blockading ships to keep at such distance from ports that many loopholes of escape would be open to blockade runners, yet it may be pointed out that even a partial blockade, even a blockade that made it risky for vessels to try to break it, would have a very deleterious effect upon the prosperity of the country and of every man, woman, and child within it. A blockade like this was that maintained during the greater part of the Civil War by the Northern States against the Southern States. This blockade, while not perfect, while it was such as to permit many vessels to pass both ways, was nevertheless so effective that it made it impossible for the Southern States to be prosperous, or to have any reasonable hope of ever being prosperous. And while it would be an exaggeration to state that the navy itself, unaided by the army, could have brought the South to terms; while it would be an exaggeration to state that all the land battles fought in the Civil War were unnecessary, that all the bloodshed and all the ruin of harvests and of homesteads were unnecessary, nevertheless it does seem that so long as the navy maintained the blockade which it did maintain, the people of the South would have been prevented from achieving enough prosperity to carry on an independent government; so that their revolt would have failed. The South, not being able to raise the blockade by means of their navy, might have tried to do so by sending an army into the Northern States, to whip the Northerners on their own ground; but this would clearly have been impossible.

The sentences above are not written with the intention of minimizing the services rendered by the army in the Civil War, or of detracting from the glory of the gallant officers and men who composed it, or of subtracting one jot or tittle from a grateful appreciation of their hardships and bloodshed; neither do they dare to question the wisdom of the statesmen who directed that the war should be fought mainly by the army. Their sole intention is to point out that, if a meagre naval force could produce so great an effect against a country mainly agricultural, a very powerful naval force, blockading effectively the principal ports of a manufacturing country, would have an effect so great that it can hardly be estimated.

It is plainly to be seen that the effect of a blockade against a purely commercial country by a modern navy would be incomparably greater now than it was fifty years ago, for two very important reasons. One reason is that the progress of modern engineering has made navies very much more powerful than they were fifty years ago; and the other reason is that the same cause has made countries very much more vulnerable to blockade, because it has made so many millions of people dependent upon manufacturing industries and the export of manufactured things, and forced them to live an artificial life. While the United States, for instance, does not depend for its daily bread on the regular coming of wheat from over the sea, yet millions of its people do depend, though indirectly, upon the money from the export of manufactured things; for with countries, as with people, habits are formed both of system and of mode of life, which it is dangerous suddenly to break; so that a country soon becomes as dependent upon outside commerce as a man does upon outside air, and a people suddenly deprived of a vigorous outside commerce would seem to be smothered almost like a man deprived of outside air.

A rough idea of the possible effect of a blockade of our coast may be gathered from the fact that our exports last year were valued at more than $2,000,000,000; which means that goods to this amount were sold, for which a return was received, either in money or its equivalent, most of it, ultimately, as wages for labor. Of course no blockade could stop all of this; but it does not seem impossible that it could stop half of it, if our fleet were destroyed by the enemy. Supposing that this half were divided equally among all the people in the United States, it would mean that each man, woman, and child would lose about $10 in one year. If the loss could be so divided up, perhaps no very great calamity would ensue. But, of course, no such division could be made, with the result that a great many people, especially poor people, earning wages by the day, would lose more than they could stand. Suppose, for instance, that a number of people earning about $900 a year, by employment in export enterprises, were the people upon whom the actual loss eventually fell by their being thrown out of employment. This would mean that more than a million people—men, women, and children—would be actually deprived of the means of living. It seems clear that such a thing would be a national disaster, for any loss of money to one man always means a loss of money or its equivalent to other men besides. For instance: suppose A owes $20 to B, B owes $20 to C, C owes $20 to D, D owes $20 to E, E owes $20 to F, F owes $20 to G, G owes $20 to H, H owes $20 to I, and I to J. If A is able to pay B, and does so, then B pays C, and so on, and everybody is happy. But suppose that A for some reason, say a blockade, fails to receive some money that he expected; then A cannot pay B, B cannot pay C, and so on; with the result, that not only does J lose his $20, but nine men are put in debt $20 which they cannot pay; with the further result that A is dunned by H, B is dunned by C, and so on, producing a condition of distress which would seem to be out of all proportion to a mere lack of $20, but which would, nevertheless, be the actual result. So in this country of 100,000,000 people, the sudden loss of $1,000,000,000 a year would produce a distress seemingly out of all proportion to that sum of money, because the individual loss of every loser would be felt by everybody else.

Since to a great manufacturing nation, like ours, the greatest danger from outside (except actual invasion) would seem to be the sudden stoppage of her oversea trade by blockade, we seem warranted in concluding that, since the only possible means of preventing a blockade is a navy, the primary use for our navy is to prevent blockade.

This does not mean that a fleet's place is on its own coast, because a blockade might be better prevented by having the fleet elsewhere; in fact it is quite certain that its place is not on the coast as a rule, but at whatever point is the best with relation to the enemy's fleet, until the enemy's fleet is destroyed. In fact, since the defensive and the offensive are so inseparably connected that it is hard sometimes to tell where one begins and the other ends, the best position for our fleet might be on the enemy's coast. It may be objected that the coast of the United States is so long that it would be impossible to blockade it. Perhaps, but that is not necessary: it would suffice to blockade Boston, Newport, New York, the Delaware, the Chesapeake, and the Gulf, say with forty ships. And we must remember that blockade running would be much more difficult now than in the Civil War, because of the increased power and accuracy of modern gunnery and the advent of the search-light, wireless telegraph, and aeroplane.

It may also be objected that the blockading of even a defenseless coast would cost the blockading country a good deal of money, by reason of the loss of trade with that country. True; but war is always expensive, and the blockade would be very much more expensive to the blockaded country; and though it might hold out a long while, it would be compelled to yield in the end, not only because of the blockade itself but because of the pressure of neutral countries; and the longer it held out, the greater the indemnity it would have to pay. The expense of blockading would therefore be merely a profitable investment.

The author is aware that actual invasion of a country from the sea would be a greater disaster than blockade, and that defense against invasion has often been urged in Great Britain as a reason for a great navy; so that the primary reason for a navy might be said to be defense against invasion. But why should an enemy take the trouble to invade us? Blockade is easier and cheaper, and can accomplish almost everything that an enemy desires, especially if it be enlivened by the occasional dropping of thousand-pound shells into Wall Street and the navy-yard.

While, however, the primary use of naval power seems to be to prevent blockade, a navy, like any other weapon, may be put to any other uses which circumstances indicate. For instance, the Northerners in the Civil War used the navy not to prevent blockade, but to make blockade; the Japanese used the navy to cover the transportation of their armies to Manchuria and Corea; and Great Britain has always used her navy to protect her trade routes.

A general statement of the various uses of a navy has been put into the phrase "command of the sea."

Of course, the probability of getting "command of the sea," or of desiring to get it is dependent on the existence of a state of war, and there are some who believe that the probability of our becoming involved in a war with a great naval nation is too slight to warrant the expense of money and labor needed to prepare the necessary naval power. So it may be well to consider what is the degree of probability.

This degree of probability cannot be determined as accurately as the probabilities of fire, death, or other things against which insurance companies insure us; for the reason that wars have been much less frequent than fires, deaths, etc., while the causes that make and prevent them are much more numerous and obscure. It seems clear, however, that, as between two countries of equal wealth, the probability of war varies with the disparity between their navies, and unless other nations are involved, is practically zero, when their navies are equal in power; and that, other factors being equal, the greatest probability of war is between two countries, of which one is the more wealthy and the other the more powerful.

In reckoning the probability of war, we must realize that the most pregnant cause of war is the combination of conflicting interests with disparity in power. And we must also realize that it is not enough to consider the situation as it is now: that it is necessary to look at least ten years ahead, because it would take the United States that length of time to prepare a navy powerful enough to fight our possible foes with reasonable assurance of success.

Ten years, however, is not really far enough ahead to look, for the simple reason that, while we could get a great many ships ready in ten years, we could not get the entire navy ready as will be explained later. If, for instance, some change in policies or in interests should make war with Great Britain probable within ten years, we could not possibly build a navy that could prevent our being beaten, and blockaded, and forced to pay an enormous indemnity.

Is there no probability of this? Perhaps there is no great probability; but there certainly is a possibility. In fact, it might be a very wise act for Great Britain, seeing us gradually surpassing her, to go to war with us before it is too late, and crush us. It has often been said that Great Britain could not afford to go to war with us, because so many of her commercial interests would suffer. Of course, they would suffer for a while; but so do the commercial interests of competing railroads when they begin to cut rates. Cutting rates is war—commercial war: but it is often carried on, nevertheless, and at tremendous cost.

Just now, Great Britain does not wish to crush us; but it is certain that she can. It is certain that the richest country in the world lies defenseless against the most powerful; and that we could not alter this condition in ten years, even if we started to build an adequate navy now.

Yet even if the degree of probability of war with Great Britain, within say ten years, seems so small that we need not consider her, are there no other great Powers with whom the degree of probability of war is great enough to make it wise for us to consider them?

Before answering this question, let us realize clearly that one of the strongest reasons that leads a country to abstain from war, even to seek relief from wrongs, actual or imagined, is a doubt of success; and that that reason disappears if another country, sufficiently powerful to assure success, is ready to help her, either by joining openly with her, or by seeking war herself at the same time with the same country. As we all know, cases like this have happened in the past. Great Britain knows it; and the main secret of her wealth is that she has always been strong enough to fight any two countries.

It is plain that a coalition of two countries against us is possible now. The United States is regarded with feelings of extreme irritation by the two most warlike nations in the world, one on our eastern side and the other on the western. War with either one would call for all the energies of the country, and the issue would be doubtful. But if either country should consider itself compelled to declare war, the other, if free at the time, might see her opportunity to declare war simultaneously. The result would be the same as if we fought Great Britain, except that our Pacific coast would be blockaded besides the Atlantic, and we should have to pay indemnity to two countries instead of to one country.

A coalition between these two countries would be an ideal arrangement, because it would enable each country to force us to grant the conditions it desires, and secure a large indemnity besides.

Would Great Britain interfere in our behalf? This can be answered by the man so wise that he knows what the international situation and the commercial situation will be ten years hence. Let him speak.

WILL THE IMPORTANCE OF NAVAL POWER INCREASE OR DECREASE?

It is clear that the importance to a country of a navy varies with two things—the value of that country's foreign trade and the probability of war.

It is also clear that, other things being equal, the probability of a country becoming involved in war varies as the value of her foreign trade; because the causes of friction and the money at stake vary in that proportion.

Therefore, the importance to a country of her navy varies as the square of the value of her foreign trade.

In order to answer the question, therefore, we must first consider whether foreign trade—sea trade—is going to increase or decrease.

As to the United States alone, the value of our exports is about ten times what it was fifty years ago, and it promises to increase. But the United States is only one country, and perhaps her increase in foreign trade has been due to conditions past or passing. So what is the outlook for the future, both for the United States and other countries? Will other countries seek foreign trade?

Yes. The recent commercial progress of Germany, Argentina, and Japan, shows the growing recognition by civilized and enterprising countries of the benefits of foreign trade, and of the facilities for attaining it which are now given by the advent of large, swift, modern steamers; steamers which are becoming larger and swifter and safer every year, more and more adapted for ocean trade. For not only have the writings of Mahan brought about an increase in the sea power of every great country; but this increase has so aroused the attention of the engineering professions that the improvement of ships, engines, and other sea material has gone ahead faster than all the other engineering arts.

The reason why the engineering arts that are connected with the sea have gone ahead more rapidly than any other arts is simply that they are given wider opportunity and a greater scope. It is inherent in the very nature of things that it is easier to transport things by water than by land; that water transportation lends itself in a higher degree to the exercise of engineering skill, to the attainment of great results.

The underlying reason for this difference seems to be that it is not possible to make any vehicle to travel on land appreciably larger than the present automobile, unless it run on rails; whereas the floating power of water is such that vehicles can be made, and are made, as large as 65,000 tons. The Mauretania, of 45,000 tons displacement, has been running for eight years, larger vessels are even now running and vessels larger still will undoubtedly be run; for the larger the ships, the less they cost per ton of carrying power, the faster they go, and the safer they are.

Sea commerce thus gives to engineers, scientists, and inventors, as well as to commercial men, that gift of the gods—opportunity. The number of ships that now traverse the ocean and the larger bodies of water communicating with it aggregate millions of tons, and their number and individual tonnage are constantly increasing. These vessels cruise among all the important seaports of the world, and form a system of intercommunication almost as complete as the system of railroads in the United States. They bring distant ports of the world very close together, and make possible that ready interchange of material products, and that facility of personal intercourse which it is one of the aims of civilization to bring about. From a commercial point of view, London is nearer to New York than San Francisco, and more intimately allied with her.

The evident result of all this is to make the people of the world one large community, in which, though many nationalities are numbered, many tongues are spoken, many degrees of civilization and wealth are found, yet, of all, the main instincts are the same: the same passions, the same appetites, the same desire for personal advantage.

Not only does this admirable system of intercommunication bring all parts of the world very closely together, but it tends to produce in all a certain similarity in those characteristics and habits of thought that pertain to the material things of life. We are all imitative, and therefore we tend to imitate each other; but the inferior is more apt to imitate the superior than vice versa. Particularly are we prone to imitate those actions and qualities by which others have attained material success. So it is to be expected, it is already a fact, that the methods whereby a few great nations attained success are already being imitated by other nations. Japan has imitated so well that in some ways she has already surpassed her models.

With such an example before her, should we be surprised that China has also become inoculated with the virus of commercial and political ambitions? It cannot be many years before she will be in the running with the rest of us, with 400,000,000 of people to do the work; people of intelligence, patience, endurance, and docility; people with everything to gain and nothing to lose; with the secret of how to succeed already taught by other nations, which she can learn from an open book.

If Japan has learned our secret and mastered it in fifty years, will China not be able to do it in less than fifty years?

Before we answer this question, let us realize clearly that China is much nearer to us in civilization than Japan was fifty years ago; that China has Japan's example to guide her, and also that any degree of civilization which was acquired by us in say one hundred years will not require half that time for another nation merely to learn. The same is true of all branches of knowledge; the knowledge of the laws of nature which it took Newton many years to acquire may now be mastered by any college student in two months. And let us not forget, besides, that almost the only difficult element of civilization which other people need to acquire, in order to enter into that world-wide competition which is characteristic of the time we live in, is "engineering" broadly considered. Doubtless there are other things to learn besides; but it is not apparent that any other things have contributed largely to the so-called new civilization of Japan. Perhaps Japan has advanced enough in Christianity to account for her advance in material power, but if so she keeps very quiet about it. It may be, also, that the relations of the government to the governed people of Japan are on a higher plane than they used to be, but on a plane not yet so high as in our own country; but has any one ever seen this claimed or even stated? It may be that the people of Japan are more kindly, brave, courteous, and patriotic than they were, and that their improvement has been due to their imitating us in these matters; but this is not the belief of many who have been in Japan. One thing, however, is absolutely sure; and that is that Japan's advance has been simultaneous with her acquirement of the engineering arts, especially as applied to military and naval matters and the merchant marine.

But even supposing that China does not take part in the world-wide race for wealth, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Argentina, and the United States, besides others like Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Spain, and Portugal, are in the race already; and that several in South America bid fair to enter soon. Not only do we see many contestants, whose numbers and ardor are increasing, but we see, also, the cause of this increasing. The cause is not only a clearer appreciation of the benefits to be derived from commerce across the water under conditions that exist now; it is also a growing appreciation of the possibilities of commerce under conditions that will exist later with countries whose resources are almost entirely undeveloped. For four hundred years, we of the United States, have been developing the land within our borders, and the task has been enormous. At one time it promised to be the work of centuries; and with the mechanical appliances of even one hundred years ago, it would have taken a thousand years to do what we have already done. Mechanical appliances of all kinds, especially of transportation and agriculture, have made possible what would, otherwise, have been impossible; and mechanical appliances will do the same things in Tierra del Fuego and Zululand.

Mechanism, working on land and sea, is opening up the resources of the world. And now, another allied art, that of chemistry, more especially biology, is in process of removing one of the remaining obstacles to full development, by making active life possible, and even pleasant, in the tropics. It is predicted by some enthusiasts that, in the near future, it will be healthier and pleasanter to live in the tropics, and even do hard work there, than in the temperate zone. When this day comes, and it may be soon, the development of the riches of lands within the tropics will begin in earnest, and wealth undreamed of now be realized.

The opening of the undeveloped countries means a continuing increase of wealth to the nations that take advantage of the opportunity, and a corresponding backsliding to those nations that fail. It means over all the ocean an increasing number of steamers. It means the continuing increase of manufacturing in manufacturing countries, and the increasing enjoyment in them of the good things of all the world. It means in the undeveloped countries an increasing use of the conveniences and luxuries of civilization and an increasing possession of money or its equivalent. It means, throughout all the world, an increase of what we call "Wealth."

In discussing a subject so great as sea trade, while it may be considered presumptuous to look fifty years ahead, it can hardly be denied that we ought at least to try to look that far ahead. To look fifty years ahead, is, after all, not taking in a greater interval of time than fifty years back; and it certainly seems reasonable to conclude that, if a certain line of progress has been going on for fifty years in a perfectly straight line, and with a vigor which is increasing very fast and shows no sign of change, the same general line of progress will probably keep up for another fifty years. If we try to realize what this means, we shall probably fail completely and become dazed by the prospect. We cannot possibly picture accurately or even clearly to ourselves any definite conditions of fifty years hence; but we certainly are warranted in concluding that by the end of fifty years, practically all of the countries of the world, including Africa, will be open to trade from one end to the other; that the volume of trade will be at least ten times as great as it is now; that the means of communication over the water and through the air will be very much better than now; and that there will be scores of appliances, methods, and processes in general use of which we have, as yet, no inkling, and cannot even imagine.

Now let us call to mind the accepted proverb that "Competition is the life of trade," and this will make us see that, accompanying this stupendous trade, extending over, and into, every corner of the world, there will be stupendous competition, involving in a vast and complicated net, every red-blooded nation of the earth.

We seem safe in concluding, therefore, that the importance of naval power will increase.

A great deal is said and written nowadays about the ability of arbitration to make wars unnecessary, and a good deal also about the possibility of an agreement among the nations, whereby armaments may be limited to forces adequate to insure that every nation shall be compelled to abide by the decision of the others in any disputed case.

In view of the number, the earnestness, and the prominence of many of the men interested in this cause; in view of the number of arbitration treaties that have been already signed; in view of the fact that arbitration among nations will simply establish a law among them like the law in any civilized country; in view of the fact that individuals in their dealings with each other sometimes surrender certain of their claims, and even rights, for the common good; in view of the fact that nations, like all business firms, like to cut down expenses, and in further view of the fact that a navy is not directly, but only indirectly, a contributor to a nation's prosperity, it seems probable that arbitration will be more and more used among the nations, and that armaments may be limited by agreement. It is clear, however, that the practical difficulties in the way of making the absolute agreement required are enormous, and that the most enthusiastic advocates of the plan do not expect that the actual limitation of armaments will become a fact for many years.

After the necessary preliminaries shall have been arranged, and the conference takes place which shall settle what armament each nation may have, it is plain that it will be to the interest of each nation to keep down the armament of every other nation, and to be allowed as much as possible itself. In this way, the operation of making the agreement will be somewhat like the forming of a trust among several companies, and the advantage will lie with that nation which is the most powerful.

For this reason it would seem a part of wisdom for each country to enter the conference with as large a navy as possible.

Therefore, the probability of an approaching agreement among the nations as to limitation of armaments, instead of being a reason for abating our exertions toward establishing a powerful navy, is really a conclusive reason for redoubling them.

This brings us to the important question, "how powerful should our navy be?"

This may seem a question impossible to answer. Of course it is impossible to answer it in terms of ships and guns; but an approximate estimate may be reached by considering the case of a man playing poker who holds a royal straight flush. Such a man would be a fool if he did not back his hand to the limit and get all the benefit possible from it. So will the United States, if she fails to back her hand to the limit, recognizing the fact that in the grand game now going on for the stakes of the commercial supremacy of the world, she holds the best hand. She has the largest and most numerous seaports, the most enterprising and inventive people, and the most wealth with which to force to success all the various necessary undertakings.

This does not mean that the United States ought, as a matter either of ethics or of policy, to build a great navy in order to take unjust advantage of weaker nations; but it does mean that she ought to build a navy great enough to save her from being shorn of her wealth and glory by simple force, as France was shorn in 1871.

It is often said that the reason for Great Britain's having so powerful a navy is that she is so situated geographically that, without a powerful navy to protect her trade, the people would starve.

While this statement may be true, the inference usually drawn is fallacious: the inference that if Great Britain were not so situated, she would not have so great a navy.

Why would she not? It is certain that that "tight little island" has attained a world-wide power, and a wealth per capita greater than those of any other country; that her power and wealth, as compared with her home area, are so much greater than those of any other country as to stagger the understanding; that she could not have done what she has done without her navy; that she has never hesitated to use her navy to assist her trade, and yet that she has never used her navy to keep her people from starving.

In fact, the insistence on the anti-starvation theory is absurd. Has any country ever fought until the people as a mass were starving? Has starving anything to do with the matter? Does not a nation give up fighting just as soon as it sees that further fighting would do more harm than good? A general or an admiral, in charge of a detached force, must fight sometimes even at tremendous loss and after all hope of local success has fled, in order to hold a position, the long holding of which is essential to the success of the whole strategic plan; but what country keeps up a war until its people are about to starve? Did Spain do so in our last war? Did Russia fear that Japan would force the people of her vast territory into starvation?

No—starvation has nothing to do with the case. If some discovery were made by which Great Britain could grow enough to support all her people, she would keep her great navy nevertheless—simply because she has found it to be a good investment.

The anti-starvation theory—the theory that one does things simply to keep from starving—does apply to some tropical savages, but not to the Anglo-Saxon. Long after starvation has been provided against, long after wealth has been secured, we still toil on. What are we toiling for? The same thing that Great Britain maintains her navy for—wealth and power.

The real reason for Great Britain's having a powerful navy applies with exact equality to the United States. Now that Great Britain has proved how great a navy is best for her, we can see at once how great a navy is best for us. That is—since Great Britain and the United States are the wealthiest countries in the world, and since the probability of war between any two countries is least when their navies are equal in power—the maximum good would be attained by making the United States navy exactly equal to the British navy.



CHAPTER IV

NAVAL PREPAREDNESS

In a preceding chapter I endeavored to show why it is that the necessities of the naval defense of a country have caused the gradual development of different types of vessels, each having its distinctive work. If those different types operated in separate localities they would lose that mutual support which it is the aim of organization to secure, and each separate group could be destroyed in turn by the combined groups of an enemy. For this reason, the types or groups are combined in one large fleet, and an admiral is placed in command.

The command of a fleet is the highest effort of the naval art. Its success in time of war demands in the admiral himself a high order of mind and nerve and body; and it demands in all the personnel, from the highest to the lowest, such a measure of trained ability and character that each shall be able to discharge with skill and courage the duties of his station.

In order that the material fleet shall be efficient as a whole, each material unit must be efficient as a unit. Each ship must be materially sound; each pump, valve, cylinder, gun, carriage, torpedo, and individual appliance, no matter how small, must be in condition to perform its expected task. The complexity of a fleet baffles any mental effort, by even those most familiar with it, to grasp it fully. Each dreadnaught, battle cruiser, destroyer, submarine, collier, tender, hospital ship, scout, supply ship, and what-not, is a machine in itself, and is filled with scores—in some cases, hundreds—of highly specialized machines, operated by steam, oil, air, electricity, and water. A superdreadnaught is a machine which, including the machines inside of her, costs $15,000,000; a battle cruiser more.

The personnel is nearly as complicated as the material. Not only are there all the various ranks of commissioned officers in the line, medical corps, pay corps, marine corps, etc., but there are ten kinds of warrant officers besides; while in the enlisted personnel there are ninety-one different "ratings" in the navy, and thirteen in the marine corps, besides temporary ratings, such as gun-pointer, gun-trainer, gun-captain, etc. Each rank and rating carries its rigidly prescribed duties, as well as its distinctive uniform and pay. That such a multitudinous host of types and individuals, both material and personnel, can be actually combined in one unit fleet, and that fleet operated as a mobile directable organism by its admiral, is a high achievement of the human intellect.

How is it done?

By discipline, by training, by knowledge, by energy, by devotion, by will; by the exercise of those mental, moral, and spiritual faculties that may be grouped under the one term "mind": the same power that co-ordinates and controls a still more complex machine, the organism of the human body.

Despite its relative crudeness, a fleet possesses, more fully than any other fruit of man's endeavor, the characteristics of an organism, defined by Webster as "an individual constituted to carry on the activities of life by means of parts or organs more or less separate in function, but mutually dependent." And though it must be true that no fleet can approximate the perfection of nature's organisms, nevertheless there is an analogy which may help us to see how a complex fleet of complex vessels has been slowly evolved from the simple galley fleets of earlier days; how its various parts may be mutually dependent yet severally independent; and how all must be made to work as one vast unit, and directed as one vast unit by the controlling mind toward "the end in view."

The common idea is that an army consists of a number of soldiers, and a navy of a number of ships. This idea is due to a failure to realize that soldiers and ships are merely instruments, and that they are useless instruments unless directed by a trained intelligence: that the first essential in an army and the first essential in a navy is mind, which first correctly estimates the situation, then makes wise plans to meet it, then carries out those plans; which organizes the men and designs the ships, and then directs the physical power exertable by the men and the ships toward "the end in view."

Owing to the enormous mechanical power made available in ships by the floating properties of water, machinery is more used by navies than by armies; but this does not mean that machinery can take the place of men more successfully in navies than in armies, except in the sense that navies can use more mechanical power. The abundant use of machines and instruments in navies does not mean that machinery and instruments can take the place of trained intelligence—but exactly the reverse. Under the guidance of trained intelligence, a machine or instrument can perform wonders. But it is not the machinery that does the wonders; it is the trained intelligence that devised the instrument or machine, and the trained intelligence that operates it. Let the trained intelligence err, or sleep, and note the results that follow. The Titanic, a mass of 40,000 tons, moving through the water at 20 knots an hour, a marvel of the science and skill of man, crashes into an iceberg, because the trained intelligence directing her errs—and is reduced at once to an inert mass of iron and brass. The mighty fleet of Russia meets the Japanese fleet in Tsushima Straits; and because the trained intelligence that directed its movements seriously erred, in an engagement decided in less than an hour, is stripped of its power and glory, and transformed into a disorganized aggregation of separate ships—some sunk, some sinking, some in flight. The Japanese fleet, on the other hand, because it is directed with an intelligence more highly trained than that which directs the Russian fleet, and because, in consequence, the officers and enlisted men perform their various duties not only in the actual battle, but in preparation for it, with a skill greater than that used in the Russian fleet, suffers but little damage in the fight—though the advantage in number and size of ships is slightly with the Russians. As a consequence of that battle, the war between Russia and Japan was decided in favor of Japan, and terms of peace were soon agreed upon. Russia lost practically all the ships that took part in the battle, and several thousand of her officers and sailors—and she lost the whole object for which she went to war.

The difference between the Russian and Japanese fleets that gave the victory to the Japanese was a difference in trained intelligence and in the relative degrees of preparedness which that difference caused.

During the actual battle, the intelligence was that of the officers and men in the respective fleets, in managing the two fleets, the ships themselves, and the guns, engines, and machines of all kinds that those ships contained. It is this factor—trained intelligence—that has decided most of the battles of history, and the course that nations thereafter followed. Battles have usually been fought between forces not very different in point of numbers and material, for the reason that a force which knew itself to be weaker than another would not fight unless compelled to fight; and in cases where two forces of widely differing strength have fought, the situation has usually been brought about directly by a superior intelligence. In fact, one of the most frequent and important endeavors of strategy and tactics—used triumphantly by Napoleon—has always been such a handling of one's forces as to be superior to the enemy at the point of contact—to "get the mostest men there the firstest," as General Forrest is said to have expressed it.

The effect of superior-trained intelligence is greatest "at the top," but it can accomplish little unless a fine intelligence permeates the whole. A fine intelligence at the top will so direct the men below, will so select men for the various posts, and will so co-ordinate their efforts, that the organization will resemble a veritable organism: all the various organs fulfilling separately yet accurately their allotted functions; all the fire-control parties, all the gun crews, all the torpedo crews, all the engineer forces properly organized and drilled; all the hulls of the vessels, all the guns, all the torpedoes, all the multifarious engines, machines, and instruments in good material condition and correctly adjusted for use.

But it is not only in the actual battle that fine intelligence is required; it is required long before the battle and far distant from the scene—in the "admiralty" at home. The Japanese fleet set out fully manned with a highly trained, enthusiastic, and confident personnel; the Russian fleet set out manned with a poorly trained and discouraged personnel, only too well aware of their defects. The issue at Tsushima was decided before the respective fleets left their respective homes—though that issue was not then known to mortals. The battle emphasized, but did not prove, what had been proved a hundred times before: the paramount importance of preparedness; that when two forces fight—the actual battle merely secures the decision as to the relative values of two completed machines, and their degrees of preparedness for use.

Preparedness of material is not, of course, so important as preparedness of personnel, because if the personnel is prepared, they will inevitably prepare the material. And the preparedness must pervade all grades: for while it is true that the preparedness of those in high command is more important than the preparedness of those in minor posts, yet there is no post so lowly that its good or its ill performance will not be a factor in the net result. An unskilful oiler may cause a hot bearing that will slow down a battleship, and put out of order the column of a squadron; a signalman's mistake may throw a fleet into confusion.

Perfect preparedness of personnel and material is essential because events follow each other so rapidly in war that no preparation can be made after it has begun. To fight is the most intense work a man can do; and a war is nothing but a fight. No matter how great or how small a war may be, no war can lose the essential qualities of a fight, or (save in the treatment of prisoners) be more brutal or less brutal when fought between two little savage tribes, than when fought between two colossal groups of Christian nations, civilized to the highest point. War is the acme of the endeavor of man. Each side determines that it will win at all costs and at all hazards; that nobody's comfort, happiness, or safety shall receive the slightest consideration; that everybody's strength and courage must be worked to the limit by night as well as by day, and that there must be no rest and no yielding to any softening influence whatever; that the whole strength and mind of the nation, and of every individual in it, must be devoted, and must be sacrificed, if need be, to the cause at stake.

In war, a navy's primary duty has usually been to protect the coast and trade routes of its country; and in order to do this, it has had to be able to oppose to an attacking fleet a defending fleet more militarily effective. If it were less effective, even if no invasion were attempted, the attacking fleet could cripple or destroy the defending fleet and then institute a blockade. In modern times an effective blockade, or at least a hostile patrol of trade routes, could be held hundreds of miles from the coast, where the menace of submarines would be negligible; and this blockade would stop practically all import and export trade. This would compel the country to live exclusively on its own resources, and renounce intercourse with the outside world. Some countries could exist a long time under these conditions. But they would exist merely, and the condition of mere existence would never end until they sued for peace; because, even if new warships were constructed with which to beat off the enemy, each new and untrained ship would be sunk or captured shortly after putting out to sea as, on June 1, 1813, in Massachusetts Bay, the American frigate Chesapeake was captured and nearly half her crew were killed and wounded in fifteen minutes by a ship almost identical in the material qualities of size and armament—the better-trained British frigate Shannon.

For these reasons, every nation that has acquired and has long retained prosperity, has realized that every country liable to be attacked by any navy must either be defended by some powerful country, or else must keep a navy ready to repel the attack successfully. To do this, the defending navy must be ready when the attack comes; because if not ready then, it will never have time to get ready. In regard to our own country, much stress is laid by some intelligent people—who forget the Chesapeake and Shannon—on the 3,000 miles of water stretching between the United States and Europe. This 3,000 miles is, of course, a factor of importance, but it is not a prohibition, because it can be traversed with great surety and quickness—with much greater surety and quickness, for instance, than the 12,000 miles traversed by the Russian fleet, in 1904, in steaming from Russia to Japan.

The 3,000 miles that separate the United States from Europe can be traversed by a fleet more powerful than ours in from two to three weeks; and the fleet would probably arrive on our shores in good condition, and manned by full crews of well-trained officers and men, habituated to their duties by recent practice and thoroughly ready to fight, as the Shannon was. We could not meet this fleet successfully unless we met it with a fleet more militarily effective; and we could not do this unless we had in the regular service and the reserve a personnel of officers and men sufficiently numerous to man immediately all the vessels that would be needed, and to man in addition all the shore stations, which would have to be expanded to a war basis. The officers and enlisted men, of course, would have to be at least as well trained as the corresponding personnel in the attacking fleet, and have as recent and thorough practice in their respective duties; for otherwise, no matter how brave and devoted they might be, the fate of the American fleet would be the fate of the Chesapeake.

In order to be ready when war breaks, the first essential is a plan for preparation. Preparation is divided naturally into two parts: first, preparation of sufficient material and personnel; second, preparation of plans for the conduct of the war after it has begun. These two parts are both considered in what are technically called "War Plans."

Preparation for war has always been known to be essential. Lack of preparation has never been due to lack of knowledge, but always to neglect. The difference between the wise and the foolish virgins was not a difference in knowledge but a difference in character. The difference between Alexander's little army and the tremendous army of Darius was not so much in numbers as in preparedness. Trained under Philip of Macedon for many years, organized for conquest and aggression, prepared to meet any situation that might arise, Philip's army carried Philip's son from victory to victory, and made him the master of the world. Caesar was great in peace as well as war, but it was by Caesar's army that Caesar's greatness was established; and it was a thoroughness of preparation unknown before that made Caesar's army great. Napoleon's successes were built on the splendid preparation of a mind transcendently fitted to grasp both principles and details, and on the comparatively unprepared state of his opponents.

The Great Elector began in 1640 a course of laborious and scientific preparation which committed all Prussia, as well as the army, to acquiring what now we call "efficiency." As this plan developed, especially under the Elector's grandson King Frederick William, the next King found himself, as Alexander had done, the chief of an army more highly prepared for war than any other. By means of that army he made himself Frederick the Great, and raised Prussia from a minor position to the first rank of European Powers. Pursuing Frederick William's system of progressive preparation, Prussia continued her prosperous course till William I defeated Austria, then France, and founded the German Empire. This does not mean that the only result of developing national efficiency to its highest point is to secure success in war—in fact, we know that it is not. But it does mean that the same quality—efficiency—which tends to prosperity in peace tends also to victory in war.

Preparing for war was a simple thing in the olden days compared with preparing now, for the reason that the implements of war are much more numerous and complicated than they used to be, especially in navies. A navy is not ready unless all preparations and plans have been made, tested, and kept up to date, to insure that all of the vessels of every kind and all the shore stations will be in material condition, fully equipped and manned by a sufficient and efficient personnel of officers and crews, in time to meet the enemy on advantageous terms, and unless the central authority has already decided what it will do, when any probable emergency shall arise. This was the condition of the German army in 1870. This was also the condition of the British navy, when war broke out in August, 1914; the British navy was ready; and therefore it was able to assume command of the sea at once, drive its enemy's commerce from the ocean, and imprison its fleets in sheltered ports.

In all countries the peace establishment of the army and navy is smaller than the war establishment, for reasons of economy, upon the assumption that there will be enough time after war is declared to get on a war basis before the enemy can strike. But since 1870, all the military nations have realized that the vital struggle of a war takes place before a shot is fired; that the factors that decide which nation shall be the victor and which the vanquished are determined before the war begins; that they are simply "functions" of preparedness. Germany was ready not only for war but for victory, because her troops were so much better trained, organized, and equipped than those of France, and her war plans so much more complete, that she was able to lay France prostrate, before the enormous resources of that country in men and material could rally in her defense.

The relative conditions in which two opposing forces will enter a war, and their relative performances afterward, will depend upon the relative excellence of the war plans made for them, and the thoroughness with which the plans are tested before war breaks. So it is not difficult to see why all the great armies have patterned after Germany, and organized special bodies of officers for the preparation and execution of War plans; and why it is that they endeavor to secure for that peculiar duty the most thorough and industrious of their officers. Owing to the nature of war itself, the principles of warfare apply in their essentials to navies as well as to armies; and so the navies have patterned after the armies and made plans whereby they can get ready to fight in fleet organization on the ocean with the greatest possible effectiveness in the shortest possible time.

During peace times every navy is maintained on a "peace basis"; only such ships and other material being kept in full commission, and only such a number of officers and enlisted men being actively employed, as the appropriations allotted by the government permit. Those ships and other material that are not actually in commission are maintained in reserve, a condition of partial readiness, of which several degrees are recognized, in which a reduced number of officers and men are kept on board, and the various structures and apparatus are kept in as high a degree of readiness as circumstances will permit. In order to man in time of war these vessels in reserve, and insure a sufficient personnel in the active fleet, a "naval reserve" is organized in each country, composed of officers and men who have had experience in the regular navy. They are compelled to undergo a specific amount of training each year, to keep themselves in readiness at all times to answer the call for active service on short notice, and to maintain such communication with the government as will make it easy to locate any man at any moment.

The act of getting ready, the passing from a state of peace to a state of readiness for fighting, is called "mobilization." Mobilization plans are an important element in war plans, but the details of any mobilization plan are of such a confidential nature that it would not be proper to discuss them in public print. There can be no impropriety, however, in making the general statement that in all navies the endeavor is made to keep the mobilization plans continually up to date, and to have them prepared in such detail that every officer and enlisted man in active service, the retired list, the naval reserve, and the naval militia, will become instantly available for a predetermined duty, and that every shore station and every necessary vessel will be ready to take part. The plans prescribe methods in very great detail whereby the ships and other vessels in reserve can be quickly put into commission with full crews of officers and men, all their various equipments, fuel, and ammunition put on board, and the vessels themselves sent out to sea to join the fleet. In addition, plans are made whereby certain auxiliaries can be fitted out at once and put into commission—such as supply ships, ammunition ships, transports, colliers, mine ships, hospital ships, etc. The mass of detailed plans, orders, and instructions is stupendous and bewildering. Years of study, trial, and rectification are required to get them into such condition that the plans can be put into immediate and effective use when war breaks out. The work must be done, however, and with the utmost thoroughness, before war breaks out; otherwise it will never be done, if an active enemy is about, because he will strike at once—and then it will be too late.

In most of the great naval countries the work of mobilizing the fleet is comparatively easy, for the reason that the coast-line is short and is not far from any part of the interior, enabling reserves to live in fairly close touch with the coast and with naval affairs, and so near the coast that they can get quickly to any port. But the conditions in the United States are more difficult than those in any other country, because of the enormous stretch of our coast, the great average distance from any place in our country to the coast, the difficulty of getting a naval reserve that could be of practical use (owing to the ease with which young men can make a comfortable living on land), and the perilous slowness of the nation as a whole to realize the necessity for preparedness.

As an offset to this, we have the 3,000 miles of ocean between us and Europe, and the 5,000 miles between us and Asia; and on account of this we may to a certain extent discount the danger of attack and the preparedness required to meet it. But our discount should be reasonable and reasoned out, and certainly not excessive. Fortunately the problem of how much time we should allow for mobilizing and joining the fleet is easy, as a moment's thought will show us that it must be simply the two weeks needed for a fleet to come from Europe to America; for we must realize that the report of the sailing of the hostile fleet would be the first news we should get of any hostile preparation or intent.

The general situation in which every isolated naval nation stands regarding other nations is not complicated, but very plain. Each nation has, as possible opponents in its policy, certain countries. The naval forces of those countries and the time in which they can be made ready are known with sufficient accuracy for practical purposes. If any isolated naval nation wishes to carry out a policy which any of those countries will forcibly oppose she must either build a navy equal to that of the other country, or else be prepared to abandon any attempt to force her policies. Stating the question in another way, she can carry out only such policies as do not require for their enforcement a navy stronger than she has.

It is true that diplomacy and the jealousies of foreign powers unite to make possible the averting of war during long periods of time. Diplomacy averted war with Germany for forty-three years, but it could not continue to avert war eternally. War finally broke out with a violence unparalleled in history, and possessing a magnitude proportional to the duration of the preceding peace. "Long coming long last, short notice soon past" is a sailor's maxim about storms; and it seems not inapplicable to wars. Certain it is that the frequent wars of savage tribes are far less terrible than the infrequent wars of enlightened powers.

This indicates that, even though a nation may be able to avert war for a long time, war will come some day, in a form which the present war foreshadows; and it suggests the possibility that the longer the war is averted, the more tremendous it will be, the greater the relative unpreparedness of a slothful nation, and the sharper her punishment when war finally breaks upon her.



CHAPTER V

NAVAL DEFENSE

There has never been a time since Cain slew Abel when men have not been compelled to devote a considerable part of their energies to self-defense. In the early ages, before large organizations existed or the mechanic arts had made much progress, defense was mostly defense of life itself. As time went on, and people amassed goods and chattels, and organized in groups and tribes, it came to include the defense of property—not only the property of individuals, but also of the tribe and the land it occupied. Still later, defense carne to include good name or reputation, when it was realized that the reputation, even of an organization, could not be destroyed without doing it an injury.

At the present day, owing to the complexity of nations and other organizations, and to the long time during which many of them have existed, the question of defense has become extremely difficult. The places in which defense has been brought to its highest excellence are the large cities of the civilized countries; for there we see that defense of the life, property, and reputation of every individual has been carefully provided for. This has been made possible by the intimate intermingling of the people, the absence of racial rivalries, and the fact that the interests of all are identical in the matter of defense of life, property, and reputation; since, no matter how bad any individual may be, he wishes that others shall be good, in order that he himself may be safe.

The defense of reputation has two aspects: the practical and the sentimental. The practical aspect regards the defense of that element of reputation which affects ability to "make a living"; while the sentimental aspect is concerned with the purely personal reputation of the individual, or with the reputation of an organization or a nation. The sentimental aspect is much more important, especially in enlightened nations, than is realized by some who have not thought much about it; for there is, fortunately, in every decent man a craving for the esteem and even the affection of his fellow men; and a knowledge that, no matter how wealthy or powerful he may be, he cannot be happy if he knows that he is despised.

The fact that individuals organize to acquire the strength of united effort brings about, among organizations, a spirit of competition like that among individuals. It is more intense, however, because no man alone can get up the enthusiasms that ten men acting together can get up, and ten men cannot get up as much as a thousand. The longer any organization is maintained, the sharper this spirit of rivalry grows to be, owing to the feeling of clanship that propinquity and material interests evoke. Its acme is found in those organizations called nations, that have lived together, nourished from the same soil, for generations; where the same loves and jealousies and hates that they now feel were felt by their fathers and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers for centuries back. Among a people possessing the potentialities of national solidarity and greatness this feeling waxes, into a self-sacrificing devotion to the nation and to the land that bore them.

That there should be such a thing is sometimes deplored; because patriotism, like all human qualities, has its bad side and its unfortunate effects. If it were not for patriotism there would probably be no war, and the greatest suffering that the world endures would thus be obviated. But if it were not for patriotism there would be no competition among nations; and in any one nation there would be no national spirit, no endeavor on the part of every man to do his part toward making her strong, efficient, and of good repute or toward making the people individually prosperous and happy. In the same way, on a smaller scale, many people deplore the necessity of competition among organizations, saying that it is ruthless and selfish; that it stamps out the individual; that it makes every man a mere cog in a money-getting machine; that it brings about strife, hatred, jealousies, and sometimes murders; that, if it were not for competition, all men would live together in peace.

This may be so; but if it were not for competition there would probably be little of that strenuous, endeavor without which no effective progress in advancing the welfare of men has ever yet been made. Of course, it may be that what we call "progress" has really not advanced the welfare of men; that the savage in Samoa is as happy as the millionaire in New York; that knowledge itself is not an unmixed benefit; and if we accept this view, we may logically declare that competition, progress, and patriotism are all disadvantages. But who will go so far? It seems to be a fact that we cannot get something for nothing: that every plus has its minus, every joy its pain; that if men succeed in passing beyond the savage state, and in overcoming the forces of nature, so that they can live in houses with every modern luxury and convenience, they must pay for it by a condition of competition that causes personal jealousies among individuals, commercial wars among organizations, physical wars among nations.

Yet the instinctive desire of every one is for peace and comfort, for the maximum of good with the minimum of exertion; and therefore the normal person dislikes to see interjected into human life the abominable confusion of war. From this it comes about that every nation, even if it consciously brings about a war, always endeavors to make it appear that the other party is the aggressor. For this reason in every country the army and navy are said to be for the "defense" of the country. No nation, no matter how aggressive its policy may secretly be, openly declares that it intends to provoke aggression. This does not mean that any nation ever deliberately raises an army and navy for aggression, and then consciously deceives the world in regard to its intention; for men are so constituted as to feel more or less unconsciously that their interests and desires are proper and those of their opponent wrong; and every nation is so firmly persuaded of the righteousness of its own policies as to feel that any country which exhibits antagonism toward these policies is trying to provoke a fight.

Now these policies, especially after a nation has adhered to them for long, seem vital in her eyes, and they usually are so. To Great Britain, whose major policy is that she must be mistress of the seas, it is vital that she should be. Her people are surrounded by the ocean, and unless they are willing simply to eke out an agricultural existence, it is essential that she should be able to manufacture articles, send them out in ships to all parts of the world, and receive in return money and the products of other lands. In order that she may be able to do this, she must feel sure that no power on earth can restrain the peaceful sailing to and fro of her exporting and importing ships. This assurance can be had only through physical force; it can be exerted only by a navy. Germany has been gradually coming into the same position, and the same clear comprehension, owing to the increase of her population, the growth of their desire for wealth, and their realization of the control by Great Britain and the United States of large areas of the surface of the earth. Germany's determination to break down, at least in part, that overpowering command of the sea which Great Britain wields has been the result. The ensuing rapid growth and excellence of Germany's navy and merchant marine brought Germany and England into sharp competition. Military and naval men have seen for years that these competing nations would have to go to war some day in "self-defense."

In the minds of some people the idea of what constitutes "defense" is rather hazy, and "defense" is deemed almost synonymous with "resistance." Perhaps the clearest idea of what constitutes "defense" is given in a sentence in Webster's Dictionary, that reads: "The inmates of a fortress are defended by its guns, protected by its walls, and guarded against surprise by sentries."

The distinction is important, and the partially aggressive character of defense it indicates is exemplified in all walks of human and brute life. Any animal, no matter how peaceably inclined, will turn on his aggressor—unless, indeed, he runs away. No one ever saw any brute oppose a merely passive resistance to attack. Every man recognizes in himself an instinct to hit back if he is hit. If it be an instinct, it must have been implanted in us for a reason; and the reason is not hard to find in the universal law of self-protection, which cannot be satisfied with the ineffectual method of mere parrying or resisting.

Naval defense, like military defense, therefore, is not passive defense only, but contains an element of "offense" as well. When the defense contains in large measure the element of offense, it is said in military parlance to be "offensive-defensive"; and the most effective defensive is this offensive-defensive. When a defending force throws off its defensive attitude entirely and advances boldly to attack, it is said to have "assumed the offensive"; but even this assumption, especially if it be temporary—as when a beleaguered garrison makes a sortie—does not rob the situation of its defensive character.

For these reasons the dividing line between offense and defense is very vague; and it is made more vague through a realization by all military people that the offense has certain decided advantages over the defense (unless the defense has the advantage of position); so that when strained relations between two nations come, each is so fearful that the other will take the offensive first, when the two nations are near each other, that it is apt to take the offensive first—in real self-defense! A striking illustration is the action of certain European Powers in the latter part of July, 1914.

In addition to the sincere convictions of either party, there is also apt to be considerable yielding to the temptation to persuade the world that the other party is the aggressor, merely to get the sympathy that usually goes to the innocent victim—the support of what Bismarck called "the imponderables." Few wars have been frankly "offensive," like the conquests of Alexander, Caesar, and Pizarro, at least in modern times; each side has usually claimed (and often sincerely believed) that its action was demanded in self-defense and that its cause was just.

To some in the United States naval defense means merely defense against invasion. This notion is of recent growth, and certainly was not held by the framers of our Constitution. Section 8 of Article I defines the powers of Congress; and although eight of the eighteen paragraphs deal exclusively with measures of defense on sea and land, only one of those paragraphs (the fifteenth) deals with invasion. The, first paragraph reads:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

The juxtaposition of the words "common defense" and "general welfare" in this admirably written paragraph could hardly have been accidental, or have been due to any other cause than a juxtaposition of those ideas in the minds of the Constitution's framers. And what more natural connection can there be between any two ideas than between those of common defense and general welfare, since the general welfare of no country has ever continued long unless it was defended. Now the general welfare of every maritime power has always been intimately concerned with its sea-borne commerce. It is only by means of sea-borne commerce, for instance, that Americans can live in the way Americans wish to live. "General welfare" means more than mere existence. A mere existence is the life a savage lives. Furthermore, the general welfare of a country requires the safety of its exported and imported goods while on the sea, and includes the right of its citizens to travel with safety in every land, to buy and sell in foreign ports, to feel a proper measure of self-respect and national respect wherever they may go, and to command from the people of the lands they visit a proper recognition of their claims to justice.

Naval defense may, therefore, be said to consist of three parts:

1st—Defense of the coast against bombardment and invasion.

2d—Defense of the trade routes traversed by ships carrying the exports and imports of the country.

3d—Defense of the national policy, including defense of the nation's reputation, honor, and prestige.

Of these, defense of the coast against bombardment and invasion is the easiest, and defense of the national policy the most difficult; because in preventing bombardment and invasion the defender has the strategical advantage of being nearer home than the adversary; while in the defense of a country's policy, a naval force may have to "assume the offensive," and go even to the far distant coasts of the enemy—as the Russian fleet went to Tsushima, where it met its death.

In that part of naval defense which is concerned with trade routes, the strategical advantage must go, in general, to that side which is the nearer to the locality where the decisive battle may occur.

In laying down a policy of naval defense, however, it is not necessary to consider these three parts separately, because no nation can ever tell whether in the distant future its naval defense will have to be used directly for any one of the three, or for all. In general terms, it may be stated that in nearly all naval wars the fleet has been used more for the defense of the nation's policy than for the actual defense of the coasts or the trade routes. This does not mean that there has never been a bombardment or invasion, or that the defense of trade routes may not have been the cause of the war itself; but it does mean that in actual wars bombardment or invasion has been rare, the capture of merchant vessels has played a minor part, and the deciding events have been battles between two fleets, that were often far from the land of either.

Owing to the fact that within modern times most of the important countries of the world have been those of continental Europe, with frontiers contiguous, and in fact identical, the defense of a country has been largely committed to the army, and most of the wars have been on land. The country standing in exception to this has been Great Britain, whose isolated and insular situation demanded a defense that was strictly naval. The tremendous advance in recent times of the engineering arts, by which ships became larger and faster, and able to carry more powerful and accurate guns than ever before, has enhanced the value of naval power and enabled Great Britain to reach all over the surface of the earth, and become more powerful than any continental nation. Thus she has made out of the very weakness of her position a paramount tower of strength.

Naval defense was taken up systematically in Great Britain in the eighth century by King Offa, to whom is credited the maxim, "He who would be secure on land must be supreme at sea"; but it must have dropped to a low ebb by 1066, for William of Normandy landed in England unopposed. Since that time Great Britain's naval defense, committed to her navy, has increased steadily in effectiveness and power, keeping pace with the increase in the national interests it defended, and utilizing all the growing resources of wealth and science which the world afforded. Until the present crisis, Great Britain's naval defense did its most important work during Napoleon's time, when Great Britain's standing, like the standing of every other European nation, was subjected to a strain that it could hardly bear. So keenly, however, did the nation and the nation's great leader, Pitt, realize the situation that the most strenuous measures were adopted to keep the navy up, press-gangs even visiting the houses of subjects of the King, taking men out and putting them by force on board his Majesty's ships. But the British navy, even more than the British army, brought Great Britain safe out of the Napoleonic danger, and made the British the paramount nation of the world.

Since then Great Britain has waxed more and more powerful, her avowed policy being that her navy should be equal to any other two; realizing that her aloofness in point of national characteristics and policy from all other nations made it possible that a coalition of at least two great nations might be pitted against her at a time when she could not get an ally. Accompanying the growth of the British navy has been the establishment of British foreign trade, British colonies, and British bases from which the navy could work, and the general making of a network of British commerce and British power over the surface of the earth. No other nation has ever dominated so large a part of the surface of the globe as has Great Britain during the last two centuries; and she has done it by means of her naval power. This naval power has been, in the language of Great Britain, for the "imperial defense"; not for coast defense alone, but for the defense of all the imperial interests, commercial and political, and even the imperial prestige. And this defense of prestige, it may here be remarked, is not a vainglorious defense, not an exhibition of a swaggering, swashbuckling spirit, but a recognition of the fact that the minds of men are so constituted that the prestige of an individual, an organization, or a nation has a practical value and is an actual force. No government that appreciates its responsibilities will willingly risk the prestige of the nation which it governs, because it knows that any weakening of it will be followed by a weakening of influence and a consequent increase of difficulty in attaining some "end in view."

The greatness of the British navy, compared with that of the British army and the other elements of Great Britain's government, has taken on magnified dimensions during the last half century. So long as war-ships used sails as their principal motive power, so long were they forced to employ methods of construction and equipment that forbade the efficient employment of high-power guns, the attainment of great speed, and the use of instruments of precision; so long, in other words, was their military effectiveness prevented from increasing greatly. But when the British navy decided to abandon sail power altogether and propel their ships by steam, a new phase was entered upon, in which every resource of the engineering arts and the physical sciences was called into requisition; and now, on board a dreadnaught, battle cruiser, destroyer, or submarine, can be found the highest examples of mechanical and electrical art and science. Every material resource which the brain and wealth of man can compass is enlisted in her naval defense; and in order to take advantage of the rapidity and certainty of movement they afford for operating fleets and ships, there has been a great advance in methods of operation, or, in military parlance, "staff work." To assist this work, the radio, the cable, and even the humble typewriter have contributed their essential share, with the result that to Great Britain's naval defense there has been devoted an extraordinary degree of efficiency, continuous effort, a more varied activity, and a larger expenditure of money than to any other object of man's activity.

The United States navy, to which is committed the naval defense of the United States, has followed the same lines as the British; and its task, while in some ways easier, is in other ways more difficult. Perhaps the chief reason why the naval defense of Great Britain is so difficult is the extreme closeness of her borders to the borders of her possible foes—for the English Channel is only twenty-three miles across from Dover to Calais. And yet the very narrowness of the Channel there lends a certain element of assistance to the defender of either coast against an enemy like Germany, because it enables the defender, by simply protecting that narrow area, to prevent an enemy from passing to the sea or from it, except by going around the British Isles. But while it is interesting thus to compare the tasks of two navies by comparing the lengths of coast line, populations, wealth, and areas of their countries, or their distances from possible antagonists, such comparisons are really misleading; for the reason that all nations are on a par in regard to the paramount element of national defense, which is defense of national policy. It was as important to Belgium as it was to Germany to maintain the national policy, and the army of Belgium was approximately as strong as that of Germany in proportion to her wealth, area, and population; but nevertheless the Belgium army was routed, and Belgium was conquered by the German army.

Much has been written to prove that the sole reason for the possession of the paramount navy by Great Britain is that the soil of Great Britain cannot support her people. In an essay, entitled "Naval Power," which I contributed to the United States Naval Institute in 1911, the fallacy of this was shown; and it was pointed out that even if Great Britain grew more than enough to feed her people, life could be made unendurable to the 60,000,000 living there (or to the people in any civilized and isolated country) by an effective blockading fleet. The question of how great a navy any country needs depends, not on the size, but on the policies of that country, and on the navies of the countries that may oppose those policies. The navy that a country needs is a navy that can defend its policies, both offensively and defensively. If, for instance, the United States does not wish to enforce any policy that Great Britain would oppose, or to oppose any policy that Great Britain would enforce, then we may leave her navy out of consideration. But if we decide that we must maintain a certain policy which a certain country may oppose, then we must have a navy at least equal to hers; because we do not know whether we should have to meet that navy near our coast, or near hers, or far away from both. For the reason, furthermore, that a war with a European Power might occur at a period of strained relations with some Asiatic Power, we must realize the temptation to that Asiatic Power to seize the opportunity and attack us on the Pacific side, knowing that we should need all our navy on the Atlantic side. This seems to mean that in order to have an effective naval defense (since we are precluded by our policy from having European allies and no South American country could give us any effective naval help) we must have on each ocean a fleet as strong as that of any nation on that ocean against whose wishes we may have to enforce a policy—or against whose policy we may have to oppose resistance.