Mahan on naval warfare

The essence of the question involved in the seizure of “private property” at sea is transportation; and with three such conspicuous instances^[119] within a century its effectiveness is historically demonstrated. The belligerent state, in the exercise of a right as yet conceded by international law, says in substance to its adversary, “I forbid your citizens the maritime transportation of their commercial property. Articles of whatever character, including the vessels which carry them, violating this lawful order will be seized and condemned.” Seizure is made contingent upon movement; otherwise the property is merely bidden to stay at home, where it will be safe. All this is in strict conformity with the execution of law under common conditions; and the practice is now regulated with a precision and system consonant to other legal adjudication, the growth of centuries of jurisprudence directed to this particular subject. Its general tendency I have indicated by certain specific instances. It is efficient to the ends of war, more or less, according to circumstances; and by distributing the burden over the whole community affected it tends to peace, as exemption from capture could not do. If the suffering of war could be made to fall only on the combatants actually in the field, the rest of the nation being protected from harm and loss by the assured ability to pursue their usual avocations undisturbed, the selfishness of men would more readily resort to violence to carry their ends.

In support of the widespread effects of interruption to transportation, I gladly quote one of the recent contendents for immunity of “private property” from maritime capture. Having on one page maintained the ineffectiveness of the seizure, because individual losses never force a nation to make peace, he concludes his article by saying:

“The question interests directly and vitally thousands of people in every country. It is of vital importance to those who go down to the sea in ships, and those who occupy their business in great waters. It appeals not only to every shipowner, but also to every merchant whose goods are shipped upon the sea, to every farmer whose grain is sent abroad, to every manufacturer who sells to a foreign market, and to every banker who is dependent upon the prosperity of his countrymen.”

I can do little to enhance this vivid presentation by an opponent; yet if we add to his list the butchers, the bakers, the tailors, shoemakers, grocers, whose customers economize; the men who drive drays to and from shipping, and find their occupation gone; the railroads, as the great common carriers, whose freights fall off; the stockholders whose dividends shrink; we shall by no means have exhausted the far-reaching influence of this intermeddling with transportation. It is a belligerent measure which touches every member of the hostile community, and, by thus distributing the evils of war, as insurance distributes the burden of other losses, it brings them home to every man, fostering in each a disposition to peace.

It doubtless will not have escaped readers familiar with the subject of maritime prize that so far I have not distinguished between the interruption of transportation by blockade and that by seizure on the high seas. The first, it may be said, is not yet in question; the second only is challenged. My reason has been that the underlying military principle—and, as I claim, justification—is the same in both; and, as we are dealing with a question of war, the military principle is of equal consideration with any other, if not superior. The effect produced is in character the same in both. In efficacy, they differ, and their comparative values in this respect are a legitimate subject for discussion. In principle and method, however, they are identical; both aim at the stoppage of transportation, as a means of destroying the resources of the enemy, and both are enforced by the seizure and condemnation of “private property” transgressing the orders.

This community of operation is so evident that, historically, the advocates of exemption of private property from confiscation in the one case have demanded, or at the least suggested, that blockade as a military measure cannot be instituted against commerce—that it can be resorted to only as against contraband, or where a port is “invested” by land as well as by sea. This was Napoleon’s contention in the Berlin Decree; and it is worthy of grave attention that, under the pressure of momentary expediency, the United States more than once, between 1800 and 1812, advanced the same view. This I have shown in my history of the War of 1812.^[120] Had this opinion then prevailed, the grinding blockade of the War of Secession could not have been applied. If we may imagine the United States and the Confederate States parties to a Hague Conference, we can conceive the impassioned advocacy of restricted blockade by the one, and the stubborn refusal of the other. This carries a grave warning to test seeming expediency in retaining or yielding a prescriptive right. There is no moral issue, if my previous argument is correct; unless it be moral, and I think it is, to resort to pecuniary pressure rather than to bloodshed to enforce a belligerent contention. As regards expediency, however, each nation should carefully weigh the effects upon itself, upon its rivals, and upon the general future of the community of states, before abandoning a principle of far-reaching consequence, and in operation often beneficent in restraining or shortening war.

It has been urged that conditions have so changed, through the numerous alternatives to sea transport now available, that the former efficacy can no longer be predicted. There might be occasional local suffering, but for communities at large the streams of supply are so many that the particular result of general popular distress will not be attained to any decisive degree. Has this argument really been well weighed? None, of course, will dispute that certain conditions have been much modified, and for the better. Steam not only has increased rapidity of land transit for persons and goods; it has induced the multiplication of roads, and enforced the maintenance of them in good condition. Thanks to such maintenance, we are vastly less at the mercy of the seasons than we once were, and communities now have several lines of communication open where formerly they were dependent upon one. Nevertheless, for obvious reasons of cheapness and of facility, water transport sustains its ascendancy. It may carry somewhat less proportionately than in old times; but, unless we succeed in exploiting the air, water remains, and always must remain, the great medium of transportation. The open sea is a road which needs neither building nor repairs. Compared with its boundless expanse, two lines of rails afford small accommodation—a circumstance which narrowly limits their capacity for freight.

[It is shown that water transportation still plays an immense part in commerce, even in the case of inland watercourses in competition with railroads, and that any interruption of commerce throws a heavy burden on the nation involved.—Editor.]

Such derangement of an established system of sea transportation is more searching, as well as more easy, when the shipping involved has to pass close by an enemy’s shores; and still more if the ports of possible arrival are few. This is conspicuously the case of Germany and the Baltic States relatively to Great Britain, and would be of Great Britain were Ireland independent and hostile. The striking development of German mercantile tonnage is significant of the growing grandeur, influence, and ambitions of the empire. Its exposure, in case of war with Great Britain, and only in less degree with France, would account, were other reasons wanting, for the importunate demand for naval expansion. Other reasons are not wanting; but in the development of her merchant shipping Germany, to use a threadbare phrase, has given a hostage to Fortune. Except by the measure advocated, and here opposed, of exempting from capture merchant vessels of a belligerent, with their cargoes, as being “private property,” Germany is bound over to keep the peace, unless occasion of national safety—vital interests—or honor drive her, or unless she equip a navy adequate to so great a task as protecting fully the carrying-trade she has laboriously created. The exposure of this trade is not merely a matter of German interest, nor yet of British. It is of international concern, a circumstance making for peace.

The retort is foreseen: How stands a nation to which the native mercantile shipping, carrying-trade, is a distinctly minor interest, and therefore does not largely affect the question of transportation? This being maintained by neutrals, the accretion of national wealth by circulation may go on little impaired by hostilities. The first most obvious reply is that such is a distinctly specialized case in a general problem, and that its occurrence and continuance are dependent upon circumstances which frequently vary. It lacks the elements of permanence, and its present must therefore be regarded with an eye to the past and future. A half-century ago the mercantile marine of the United States was, and for nearly a century before had been, a close second to that of Great Britain; to-day it is practically non-existent, except for coasting-trade. On the other hand, during the earlier period the thriving Hanse towns were nearly the sole representatives of German shipping, which now, issuing from the same harbors, on a strip of coast still narrow, is pressing rapidly forward under the flag of the empire to take the place vacated by the Americans.

With such a reversal of conditions in two prominent examples, the problem of to-day in any one case is not that of yesterday, and may very well not be that of to-morrow. From decade to decade experience shifts like a weather-cock; the statesman mounted upon it becomes a Mr. Facing-Bothways. The denial of commercial blockade, the American national expediency of 1800, suggested by such eminent jurists as John Marshall and James Madison, would have been ruinous manacles to the nation of 1861–65. A government weighing its policy with reference to the future, having regard to possible as well as actual conditions, would do well before surrendering existing powers—the bird in the hand—to consider rather the geographical position of the country, its relation to maritime routes—the strategy, so to say, of the general permanent situation—and the military principles upon which maritime capture rests. In that light a more accurate estimate will be made of temporary tactical circumstances, to-day’s conditions—such, for instance, as set forth by the present Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.^[121] In his letter, favoring immunity from capture for “private property,” disproportionate stress is laid upon the dangers of Great Britain, the points which make against her; a serious tactical error. The argument from exposure is so highly developed, that the possible enemies whose co-operation is needed to secure the desired immunity for “private” property might well regard the request to assist as spreading the net in the sight of the bird; a vanity which needs not a wise man to detect. On the other hand, the offensive advantage of capture to Great Britain, owing to her situation, is, in my judgment, inadequately appreciated.

The writer has fallen into the mistake which our General Sherman characterized as undue imagination concerning what “the man on the other side of the hill” might do; a quaint version of the first Napoleon’s warning against “making a picture to yourself.” The picture of Great Britain’s dangers is overdrawn; that to her enemies—“the full measure of the mischief we could do to a Continental nation”—is underdrawn. It would seem as if, in his apprehension, “the disastrous consequences^[122] which would flow from even slight depredations by commerce destroyers on British shipping” could find no parallel in the results to a Continental trade from British cruisers. France or Germany, for example, shut off from the sea, can be supplied by rail from, say, Antwerp or Rotterdam; but it is apparently inconceivable that, in the contingency of a protracted naval war, the same ports might equally supply Great Britain by neutral ships. Alternate sea routes close, apparently automatically; only alternate land routes stay open. Thus undue weight is laid upon defensive motives, where the offensive requires the greater emphasis. The larger merchant tonnage of Great Britain involves a greater defensive element, yes; but are not defensive conditions favorably modified by her greater navy, and by her situation, with all her western ports open to the Atlantic, from Glasgow to Bristol and round to Southampton? And is not the station for such defense identical with the best for offense by maritime capture? The British vessels there occupy also a superior position for coal renewal; the difficulty of which for an enemy, threatening the Atlantic approaches to Great Britain, seems too largely discounted by imaginations preoccupied with hostile commerce destroyers.

The concluding sentence of Lord Loreburn’s letter contains a warning familiar to military thought. “Great Britain will gain much from a change long and eagerly desired by the great majority of other Powers.” The wish of a possible enemy is the beacon which suggests the shoal. The truth is, if the British Navy maintains superiority, it is to the interest of her enemies to have immunity from capture for “private property;” if it falls, it is to their interest to be able to capture. The inference is safe that probable enemies, if such there be, and if they entertain the wish asserted, do not expect shortly to destroy the British Navy.

While unconvinced by the reasoning, it is refreshing to recognize in this letter a clear practical enunciation which sweeps away much sentimental rhetoric. “I urge [immunity for private property] not upon any ground of sentiment or humanity (indeed, no operation of war inflicts less suffering than the capturing of unarmed vessels at sea), but upon the ground that on the balance of argument, coolly weighed, the interests of Great Britain will gain much from the change.” I more than doubt the conclusion; but its sobriety contrasts pleasantly with the exuberances, “noble and enlightened action,” “crown of glory,” and the like, with which it pleases certain of our American advocates to enwreathe this prosaic utilitarian proposition.

A possibility which affects the general question much more seriously than others so far considered, is that of neutral carriers taking the place of a national shipping exposed to capture under present law. This is one phase of a change which has come over the general conditions of carrying-trade since the United States became a nation, and since Great Britain, three quarters of a century afterwards, formally repealed her Navigation Acts. The discussion preceding this repeal, together with the coincident Free Trade movement, preceded by but a few years the Treaty of Paris in 1856, and gave an impulse which doubtless facilitated the renouncement in that treaty by Great Britain of the right to capture enemy’s property under a neutral flag. The concession was in the air, as we say; which proves only that it was contagious, not that it was wise. Like many hasty steps, however, once taken it probably is irreversible.

The effect of this concession has been to legalize, among the several great states signatory to the treaty, the carriage of belligerent property by neutral ships, in which previously it had been liable to seizure. In its later operation, the condemnation of the enemy’s property had not involved the neutral carrier further than by the delays necessary to take her into port, adjudicate the question of ownership, and remove the property, if found to be belligerent. Such detention, however, was a strong deterrent, and acted as an impediment to the circulation of belligerent wealth by neutral means. It tended to embarrass and impoverish the belligerent; hence the removal of it is a modification of much importance. Neutral shipping thus is now free to take a part in hostilities, which formerly it could only do at the risk of loss, more or less serious. To carry belligerent property, which under its own flag would be open to seizure, is to aid the belligerent; is to take part in the war.

In considering such an amelioration, if it be so regarded, it is possible to exaggerate its degree. If a nation cherishes its carrying-trade, does a large part of its transportation in its own vessels, and is unable in war to protect them, the benefit of the innovation will be but partial. Its own shipping, driven from the sea, is an important element in the total navigation of the world, and the means to replace it will not be at once at hand. Neutrals have their own commerce to maintain, as well as that of the weaker belligerent. They would not undertake the whole of the latter, if they could; and, if they would, they will not at once have the means. Steamships driven off the sea, and for the moment lost to navigation, cannot be replaced as rapidly as the old sailing-vessels. Moreover, neutral merchants have to weigh the chances of hostilities being short, and that the banished shipping of the belligerent may return in its might to the seas with the dawn of peace, making their own a drug on the market. In short, while the belligerent profits from a change which gives him free use of neutral ships, whereas he formerly had only a limited use, a considerable embarrassment remains. The effect is identical in principle and operation with that before indicated, as resulting from blockading a few chief harbors. A certain large fraction of transportation is paralyzed, and the work done by it is thrown upon ports and roads which have not the necessary facilities. It is as though a main trunk line of railroad were seized and held. The general system is deranged, prices rise, embarrassment results, and is propagated throughout the business community. This affects the nation by the suffering of thousands of individuals, and by the consequent reduction of revenue.

It would seem, therefore, that even under modern conditions maritime capture—of “private” property—is a means of importance to the ends of war; that it acts directly upon the individual citizens and upon the financial power of the belligerent, the effect being intensified by indirect influence upon the fears of the sensitive business world. These political and financial consequences bring the practice into exact line with military principle; for, being directed against the resources of the enemy, by interrupting his communications with the outer world, it becomes strictly analogous to operations against the communications of an army with its base—one of the chief objects of strategy. Upon the maintenance of communications the life of an army depends, upon the maintenance of commerce the vitality of a state. Money, credit, is the life of war. Lessen it, and vigor flags; destroy it, and resistance dies. Accepting these conclusions, each state has to weigh the probable bearing upon its own fortunes of the continuance or discontinuance of the practice. From the military point of view the question is not merely, nor chiefly, “What shall our people escape by the abandonment of this time-sanctioned method?” but, “What power to overcome the enemy shall we thereby surrender?” It is a question of balance, between offense and defense. As Jefferson said, when threatened with a failure of negotiations, “We shall have to begin the irrational process of trying which can do the other most harm.” As a summary of war, the sentence is a caricature; but it incidentally embodies Farragut’s aphorism, “The best defense is a rapid fire from our own guns.” For the success of war, offense is better than defense; and in contemplating this or any other military measure, let there be dismissed at once, as preposterous, the hope that war can be carried on without some one or something being hurt; that the accounts should show credit only and no debit.

For the community of states a broader view should be taken, from the standpoint that whatever tends to make war more effective tends to shorten it and to prevent it.

The poet’s words, “The Parliament of man, the federation of the world,” were much in men’s mouths this past summer. There is no denying the beauty of the ideal, but there was apparent also a disposition, in contemplating it, to contemn the slow processes of evolution by which Nature commonly attains her ends, and to impose at once, by convention, the methods that commended themselves to the sanguine. Fruit is not best ripened by premature plucking, nor can the goal be reached by such short cuts. Step by step, in the past, man has ascended by means of the sword, and his more recent gains, as well as present conditions, show that the time has not yet come to kick down the ladder which has so far served him. Three hundred years ago, the people of the land in which the Conference was assembled wrenched with the sword civil and religious peace, and national independence, from the tyranny of Spain. Then began the disintegration of her empire, and the deliverance of peoples from her oppression; but this was completed only last year, and then again by the sword—of the United States.

In the centuries which have since intervened, what has not “justice, with valor armed,” when confronted by evil in high places, found itself compelled to effect by resort to the sword? To it was due the birth of the United States, not least among the benefits of which was the stern experience that has made Great Britain no longer the mistress, but the mother, of her dependencies. The control, to good from evil, of the devastating fire of the French Revolution, and of Napoleon, was due to the sword. The long line of illustrious names and deeds, of those who bore it not in vain, has in our times culminated—if indeed the end is even yet nearly reached—in the new birth of the United States by the extirpation of human slavery, and in the downfall, but yesterday, of a colonial empire identified with tyranny. What the sword, and it supremely, tempered only by the stern demands of justice and of conscience, and the loving voice of charity, has done for India and for Egypt, is a tale at once too long and too well known for repetition here. Peace, indeed, is not adequate to all progress; there are resistances that can be overcome only by explosion. What means less violent than war would in a half-year have solved the Caribbean problem, shattered national ideas deep rooted in the prepossessions of a century, and planted the United States in Asia, face to face with the great world problem of the immediate future? What but the War of 1898 rent the veil which prevented the English-speaking communities from seeing eye to eye, and revealed to each the face of a brother? Little wonder that a war which, with comparatively little bloodshed, brought such consequences, was followed by the call for a Peace Conference!

Power, force, is a faculty of national life; one of the talents committed to nations by God. Like every other endowment of a complex organization, it must be held under control of the enlightened intellect and of the upright heart; but no more than any other can it be carelessly or lightly abjured, without incurring the responsibility of one who buries in the earth that which was entrusted to him for use. And this obligation to maintain right, by force if need be, while common to all states, rests peculiarly upon the greater, in proportion to their means. Much is required of those to whom much is given. So viewed, the ability speedily to put forth the nation’s power, by adequate organization and other necessary preparation, according to the reasonable demands of the nation’s intrinsic strength and of its position in the world, is one of the clear duties involved in the Christian word “watchfulness,”—readiness for the call that may come, whether expectedly or not. Until it is demonstrable that no evil exists, or threatens the world, which cannot be obviated without recourse to force, the obligation to readiness must remain; and, where evil is mighty and defiant, the obligation to use force—that is, war—arises. Nor is it possible, antecedently, to bring these conditions and obligations under the letter of precise and codified law, to be administered by a tribunal. The spirit of legalism is marked by blemishes as real as those commonly attributed to “militarism,” and not more elevated. The considerations which determine good and evil, right and wrong, in crises of national life, or of the world’s history, are questions of equity often too complicated for decision upon mere rules, or even upon principles, of law, international or other. The instances of Bulgaria, of Armenia, and of Cuba, are entirely in point; and it is most probable that the contentions about the future of China will afford further illustration. Even in matters where the interest of nations is concerned, the moral element enters; because each generation in its day is the guardian of those which shall follow it. Like all guardians, therefore, while it has the power to act according to its best judgment, it has no right, for the mere sake of peace, to permit known injustice to be done to its wards.

The present strong feeling in favor of arbitration, throughout the nations of the world, is in itself a subject for congratulation almost unalloyed. It carries indeed a promise, to the certainty of which no paper covenants can pretend; for it influences the conscience by inward conviction, not by external fetter. But it must be remembered that such sentiments, from their very universality and evident laudableness, need correctives, for they bear in themselves a great danger of excess or of precipitancy. Excess is seen in the disposition, far too prevalent, to look upon war not only as an evil, but as an evil unmixed, unnecessary, and therefore always unjustifiable; while precipitancy, to reach results considered desirable, is evidenced by the wish to impose arbitration, to prevent recourse to war, by a general pledge previously made. Both frames of mind receive expression in the words of speakers among whom a leading characteristic is lack of measuredness and of proportion. Thus an eminent citizen is reported to have said: “There is no more occasion for two nations to go to war than for two men to settle their difficulties with clubs.” Singularly enough, this point of view assumes to represent peculiarly Christian teaching. In so doing, it willfully ignores the truth that Christianity, while it will not force the conscience by other than spiritual arguments, as “compulsory” arbitration might, distinctly recognizes the sword as the resister and remedier of evil in the sphere “of this world.”

Arbitration’s great opportunity has come in the advancing moral standards of states, whereby the disposition to deliberate wrong-doing has diminished; consequently, the occasions for redressing wrong by force are less frequent to arise. In view of recent events, however, and very especially of notorious, high-handed oppression, initiated since the calling of the Peace Conference,^[124] and resolutely continued during its sessions in defiance of the public opinion of the world at large, it is premature to assume that such occasions belong wholly to the past. Much less can it be assumed that there will be no further instances of a community believing, conscientiously and entirely, that honor and duty require of it a certain course, which another community with equal integrity may hold to be inconsistent with the rights and obligations of its own members. It is, for instance, quite possible, especially to one who has recently visited Holland, to conceive that Great Britain and the Boers are alike satisfied of the substantial justice of their respective claims. It is permissible most earnestly to hope that, in disputes between sovereign states, arbitration may find a way to reconcile peace with fidelity to conscience, in the case of both; but if the conviction of conscience remains unshaken, war is better than disobedience,—better than acquiescence in recognized wrong. The great danger of undiscriminating advocacy of arbitration, which threatens even the cause it seeks to maintain, is that it may lead men to tamper with equity, to compromise with unrighteousness, soothing their conscience with the belief that war is so entirely wrong that beside it no other tolerated evil is wrong. Witness Armenia, and witness Crete. War has been avoided; but what of the national consciences that beheld such iniquity and withheld the hand?

If it be true, as I have expressed my own conviction, that moral motives are gaining in force the world over, we can have hope of the time when they shall prevail; but it is evident that they must prevail over all nations equally, or with some approach to equality, or else discussion between two disputants will not rest on the same plane. In the difference between the United States and Spain, I suppose the argument of the United States, the moral justification to itself of its proposed action, would be that misgovernment of Cuba, and needless Cuban suffering, had continued so long as to show that Spain was not capable of giving good government to her distant dependency. There was no occasion to question her desire to give it, the honesty either of her assertions or measures to that end; but it was quite apparent that it was not in her to give effect to her efforts. Now, presuming Spain to take that view, it is conceivable (to the imagination) that her rulers might say, “Yes, it is true, we have failed continuously. The Cubans have a moral right to good government, and as we have not been able to give it them, it is right that we should step out.” But, assuming Spain unequal to such sublime moral conviction and self-abnegation, what was the United States to do, as a practical matter? What she did was perfectly practical; she used the last argument of nations as international law stands; but, suppose she had gone to arbitration, upon what grounds would the Court proceed? What the solid prearranged basis of its decision, should that be that Spain must evacuate Cuba? Is there anything in the present accord of states, styled International Law, that would give such power? And, more pertinent still, are states prepared now to concede to an arbitral Court the power to order them out of territory which in its opinion they misgovern, or which in its opinion they should not retain after conquest? e. g., Schleswig Holstein, Alsace and Lorraine, the Transvaal, Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands?

Or, take another impending and very momentous instance, one fraught with immeasurable issues. If I rightly appreciate conditions, there is, among the English-speaking communities bordering the Pacific, a deep instinctive popular determination, one of those before which rulers have to bow, to exclude, from employment in the sparsely settled territories occupied by them, the concentrated crowded mass of mankind found in Japan and China. More than anything else this sums up the question of the Pacific. Two seas of humanity, on very different levels as to numbers and economical conditions, stand separated only by this artificial dyke of legislation, barring the one from rushing upon and flooding the other. I do not criticize an attitude with which, whether I approve or not, I can sympathize; but as I look at the legislation, and contrast the material conditions, I wonder at the improvidence of Australasia in trusting that laws, though breathing the utmost popular conviction and purpose, can protect their lands from that which threatens. “Go home,” said Franklin to a fellow colonist in the days of unrest in America, “and tell them to get children. That will settle all our difficulties.” Fill up your land with men of your own kind, if you wish to keep it for yourselves. The Pacific States of North America are filling up, and, more important, they back solidly upon, and are politically one with, other great communities into which the human tide is pouring apace; yet in them, too, labor may inflict upon its own aims revolutionary defeat, if for supposed local advantage it embarrasses the immigration of its own kind. It is very different for those who are severed from their like by sea, and therefore must stand on their own bottom. All the naval· power of the British Empire cannot suffice ultimately to save a remote community which neither breeds men in plenty nor freely imports them.

We speak of these questions now as racial, and the expression is convenient. It is compact, and represents truly one aspect of such situations, which, however, are essentially economical and territorial. In long-settled countries race and territory tend to identity of meaning, but we need scarce a moment’s recollection to know that race does not bind as do border lines, nor even they as do economical facts. Economical facts largely brought about the separation of America from Great Britain; economical facts brought about the American Union and continue to bind it. The closer union of the territories which now constitute the British Empire must be found in economical adjustments; the fact of common race is not sufficient thereto. Now, economical influences are of the most purely material order—the order of personal self-interest; in that form at least they appeal to the great majority, for the instructed political economists form but a small proportion of any community. Race, yes; territory—country—yes; the heart thrills, the eyes fill, self-sacrifice seems natural, the moral motive for the moment prevails; but in the long run the hard pressure of economical truth comes down upon these with the tyranny of the despot. There are, indeed, noble leaders not a few, who see in this crushing burden upon their fellow millions an enemy to be confronted and vanquished, not by direct opposition, but by circumvention, relieving his sway by bettering environment, and so giving play to the loftier sentiments. But that these men may so work they need to be, as we say, independent, released from the grip of daily bread; and their very mission, alike in its success and its failures, testifies to the preponderant weight of economical conditions in the social world....

If with wealth, numbers and opportunity, a people still cannot so organize their strength as to hold their own, it is not practical to expect that those to whom wealth and opportunity are lacking, but who have organizing faculty and willingness to fight, will not under the pressure of need enter upon an inheritance which need will persuade themselves is ethically their due. What, it may be asked, is likely to be the reasoning of an intelligent Chinese or Japanese workman, realizing the relative opportunities of his crowded country and those of Australia and California, and finding himself excluded by force? What ethical, what moral, value will he find in the contention that his people should not resort to force to claim a share in the better conditions from which force bars him? How did the white races respect the policy of isolation in Japan and China, though it only affected commercial advantages? I do not in the least pronounce upon the ethical propriety of exclusion by those in possession—the right of property, now largely challenged. I merely draw attention to the apparent balance of ethical argument, with the fact of antagonistic economical conditions; and I say that for such a situation the only practical arbiter is the physical force, of which war is merely the occasional political expression.

In the broad outlook, which embraces not merely armed collision, but the condition of preparation and attitude of mind that enable a people to put forth, on demand, the full measure of their physical strength,—numerical, financial and military,—to repel a threatened injury or maintain a national right, war is the regulator and adjuster of those movements of the peoples, which in their tendencies and outcome constitute history. These are natural forces, which from their origin and power are self-existent and independent in relation to man. His provision against them is war; the artificial organization of other forces, intrinsically less powerful materially, but with the advantage which intelligent combination and direction confer. By this he can measurably control, guide, delay, or otherwise beneficially modify, results which threaten to be disastrous in their extent, tendency, or suddenness. So regarded war is remedial or preventive.

I apprehend that these two adjectives, drawn from the vocabulary of the healer, embody both the practical and moral justification of war. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It will be well that we invoke moral power to help heal the evils of the world, as the physician brings it to bear on the ills of the body; but few are prepared to rely upon it alone. We need material aid as well. The dikes of Holland withstand by direct opposition the natural mission of the North Sea to swallow up the land they protect. The levees of the Mississippi restrain and guide to betterment the course of the mighty current, which but for them would waste its strength to devastate the shores on either hand. These two artificial devices represent a vast expenditure of time, money, and energy; of unproductive labor so-called; but they are cheaper than a flood. The police of our great cities prevent the outburst of crime, the fearful possibilities of which manifest themselves on the happily rare occasions when material prevention has from any cause lapsed. The police bodies are a great expense; but they cost less than a few days of anarchy. Let us not deceive ourselves by fancying that the strong material impulses which drive those masses of men whom we style nations, or races, are to be checked or guided, unless to the argument of a reasonable contention there be given the strong support of organized material power. If the organized disappear, the unorganized will but come into surer and more dreadful collision.

There is one further conclusion to be drawn from the war between Japan and Russia, which contradicts a previous general impression that I myself have shared, and possibly in some degree have contributed to diffuse. That impression is, that navies depend upon maritime commerce as the cause and justification of their existence. To a certain extent, of course, this is true; and, just because true to a certain extent, the conclusion is more misleading. Because partly true, it is accepted as unqualifiedly true. Russia has little maritime commerce, at least in her own bottoms; her merchant flag is rarely seen; she has a very defective sea-coast; can in no sense be called a maritime nation. Yet the Russian navy had the decisive part to play in the late war; and the war was unsuccessful, not because the navy was not large enough, but because it was improperly handled. Probably, it also was intrinsically insufficient—bad in quality; poor troops as well as poor generalship. The disastrous result does not contravene the truth that Russia, though with little maritime shipping, was imperatively in need of a navy.

I am not particularly interested here to define the relations of commerce to a navy. It seems reasonable to say that, where merchant shipping exists, it tends logically to develop the form of protection which is called naval; but it has become perfectly evident, by concrete examples, that a navy may be necessary where there is no shipping. Russia and the United States to-day are such instances in point. More and more it becomes clear, that the functions of navies are distinctly military and international, whatever their historical origin in particular cases. The navy of the United States, for example, took its rise from purely commercial considerations. External interests cannot be confined to those of commerce. They may be political as well as commercial; may be political because commercial, like the claim to “the open door” in China; may be political because military, essential to national defense, like the Panama Canal and Hawaii; may be political because of national prepossessions and sympathies, race sympathies, such as exist in Europe, or traditions like the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine in its beginnings was partly an expression of commercial interest, directed against a renewal of Spanish monopoly in the colonial system; it was partly military, defensive against European aggressions and dangerous propinquity; partly political, in sympathy with communities struggling for freedom.

A broad basis of mercantile maritime interests and shipping will doubtless conduce to naval efficiency, by supplying a reserve of material and personnel. Also, in representative governments, military interests cannot without loss dispense with the backing which is supplied by a widely spread, deeply rooted, civil interest, such as merchant shipping would afford us.

To prepare for war in time of peace is impracticable to commercial representative nations, because the people in general will not give sufficient heed to military necessities, or to international problems, to feel the pressure which induces readiness. All that naval officers can do is to realize to themselves vividly, make it a part of their thought, that a merchant shipping is only one form of the many which the external relations of a country can assume. We have such external questions in the Monroe Doctrine, the Panama Canal, the Hawaiian Islands, the market of China, and, I may add, in the exposure of the Pacific Coast, with its meagre population, insufficiently developed resources, and somewhat turbulent attitude towards Asiatics. The United States, with no aggressive purpose, but merely to sustain avowed policies, for which her people are ready to fight, although unwilling to prepare, needs a navy both numerous and efficient, even if no merchant vessel ever again flies the United States flag. If we hold these truths clearly and comprehensively, as well as with conviction, we may probably affect those who affect legislation. At all events, so to hold will do no harm.

CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE

1840. September 27, Alfred Thayer Mahan born at West Point, New York, son of Professor Dennis Hart Mahan of the U. S. Military Academy.

1854–1856. Student at Columbia College in the City of New York.

1856. September 30, entered the third class, U. S. Naval Academy, as acting midshipman. Appointed from the 10th Congressional District of New York.

1859. June 9, graduated as midshipman.

1859–1861, Frigate Congress, Brazil station.

1861. August 31, promoted to lieutenant. Converted steamer James Adger for ten days.

1861–1862. Steam corvette Pocahontas, in the Potomac flotilla; capture of Port Royal, November 7, 1861; South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

1862–1863. Naval Academy at Newport, Rhode Island. First lieutenant in the Macedonian during the summer practice cruise to England in 1863.

1863–1864. Steam corvette Seminole, West Gulf Blockading Squadron.

1864–1865. James Adger; staff of Rear Admiral Dahlgren, South Atlantic Blockading Squadron; James Adger.

1865–1866. Double-ender Muscoota.

1865. June 7, promoted to lieutenant commander.

1866. Ordnance duty, Washington Navy Yard.

1867–1869. Steam sloop Iroquois, to Asiatic station, via Cape of Good Hope. Detached in 1869; returned via Rome and Paris.

1869. Commanding gunboat Aroostook, Asiatic station.

1870–1871. Navy yard, New York.

1871. Worcester, home station.

1872. Promoted to commander. Receiving ship, New York.

1873–1874. Commanding side-wheel steamer Wasp in the Rio de la Plata.

1875–1876. Navy yard, Boston.

1877–1880. Naval Academy, Annapolis.

1880–1883. Navy yard, New York.

1883–1885. Commanding steam sloop Wachusett, South Pacific Squadron.

1885. Assigned to Naval War College, as lecturer on naval history and strategy.

1886–1889. President of Naval War College.

1889–1892. Special duty, Bureau of Navigation. Member of commission to choose site for navy yard in Puget Sound.

1892–1893. President of Naval War College.

1893–1895. Commanding cruiser Chicago, flagship of Rear Admiral Erben, European station.

1895–1896. Special duty at the Naval War College.

1896. November 17, retired as captain on his own application after forty years’ service.

1896–1912. Special duty in connection with Naval War College.

1898. Member of Naval War Board during Spanish War.

1899. Delegate to Hague Peace Conference.

1906. June 29, rear admiral on the retired list.

1914. December 1, died at the Naval Hospital, Washington.

Academic Honors

D.C.L., Oxford, 1894; LL.D., Cambridge, 1894; LL.D., Harvard, 1895; LL.D., Yale, 1897; LL.D., Columbia, 1900; LL.D., Magill, 1909; President of the American Historical Association, 1902.