National Defence: France and Europe
"The gigantic naval preparations made and making in Europe sufficiently indicate, especially if Great Britain be involved in it, that the next great European maritime struggle will be as desperate as were the long wars of the Napoleonic era. Like those, it will be a war for national existence. Commerce will henceforth be even more essential to the British Isles than it was then; for with their increased population they could not long subsist without imported food. It is idle to say that the rules of international law are more humane, or that they are better understood, or that they are better protected by treaties than they were a hundred years ago. The rights of neutrals have depended in the past, and will depend in the future, in every life and death struggle between nations, whatever treaties may say, upon the exigencies of the hour.
When Great Britain and France were at war, each preying upon the commerce of the other, the carrying trade of Europe fell naturally into American hands.
All naval powers have now prepared themselves with commerce-destroyers. The moment these are turned loose, the commerce of all the warring nations will seek the protection of some great neutral power,-which means that it will come under our flag. To illustrate, the Confederate cruisers were few in number. They destroyed altogether only about 175 vessels, most of them sailing ships, and many of small value; and yet these few enemies drove more than seven hundred American ships to the British flag, many of them never to come back.
It is no sufficient answer to say that in 1810 we were seven millions, that now we are seventy millions, that our resources for the upbuilding of a great navy are second to none in the world, and that therefore our rights would be respected. Our naval and military prestige and our wonderful physical and material resources are no doubt quite sufficient to cause any statesman not under stress of some controlling necessity to think twice before provoking us to war; but who can believe, that, in the midst of a desperate struggle, any great naval power would, for fear of retribution at some future day, imperial its existence by taking account of the rights of a neutral power which was for the time being unable to maintain them? If America is to profit by the lessons of the past, she will always have on hand a navy which can, at the moment when it is needed, take care of itself and of all the commerce which may at any time be or desire to be under our flag. This does not mean that we need a maritime force as large as that of Great Britain, or even of France; but it does mean that our navy should always be so formidable that no power could ever deem it wise, even for the moment, to offend against the rights of our flag upon the seas."
Captain A. T. Mahan makes a powerful plea in his masterly book on "The Influence of Sea-Power Upon History," for a strengthened American navy. He is no dreamer of a faerie era when swords and battle-ships will be disused and the art of war be forgotten. His conviction is that strength, and the discreet display of it, is the best insurance against troubles of the international kind.
"Our only rivals in potential military strength are the great powers of Europe. These, however, while they have interests in the Western Hemisphere, to which a certain solidarity is imparted by their instinctive and avowed opposition to a policy to which the United States, by an inward compulsion apparently irresistible, becomes more and more committed, have elsewhere yet wider and more onerous demands upon their attention. Since 1884 Great Britain, France, and Germany have each acquired colonial possessions, varying in extent from one million to two and a half million square miles,-chiefly in Africa. This means, as is generally understood, not merely the acquisition of so much new territory, but the perpetuation of national rivalries and suspicions, maintaining in full vigor, in this age, the traditions of past animosities. It means uncertainties about boundaries,-that more fruitful source of disputes when running through unexplored wilderness,-jealousy of influence over native occupants of the soil, fear of encroachment, unperceived till too late, and so a constant, if silent, strife to insure national preponderance in these newly opened regions. The colonial expansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is being resumes under our eyes, bringing with it the same train of ambitions and feelings that were exhibited then, though these are qualified by the more orderly methods of modern days and by a well-defined mutual apprehension,-the result of a universal preparedness for war, the distinctive feature of our own time which most guarantees peace."
To the argument that a navy for defence is all we shall ever need, Captain Mahan replies:
"In a certain sense we all want a navy for defence only. It is to be hoped that the United States will never seek war except for the defence of her rights, her obligations, or her necessary interests. In that sense our policy may always be defensive only, although it may compel us at times to steps justified rather by expediency-the choice of the lesser evil -- than by incontrovertible right. But if we have interests beyond sea which a navy may have to protect, it plainly follows that the navy has more to do, even in war, than to defend the coast; and it must be added, as a received military axiom, that war, however defensive in moral character, must be waged aggressively if it is to hope for success.