THE SEA-POWER OF AMERICA.*
THUCYDIDES, describing the political evolution of his country under the Tyrants, observes that every State which acquired dominion in Greece was indebted for it to the possession of a navy. To understand the bearings of such a remark the Greek of two thousand four hundred years ago did not need the culture of the loungers of the Painted Porch : the most ignorant sausage-vendor of the Agora could fully compre- hend its gist. In all ages the import of "sea-power" has received due recognition, hampered, it is true, by occasional reluctance to pay the bill. From the epochs of Pericles and Mark Antony to the days of the "sea-dogs" of Drake and Hawkins, what maritime supremacy meant was fully under- stood; in modern London the reasons for fitting out more 'Majesties' and Terribles ' are as patent to "the man in the street" as to Mr. Goschen and Sir C. Dilke. Our English approval of Captain Mahan's dexterous manipulation of the theme of the building up of empire by ships has not stopped at mere recognition of the success with which, to use Dr. Johnson's language, be has given the old dog a new doublet. According to some of his more fanatical admirers, the American author is "a Galileo" of historical science, to whose demonstrations of "the influence of sea-power" we owe our recent Admiralty programmes, and even the timely popular resuscitation of the tune of "Rule, Britannia," which had become somewhat obsolete amongst us.
His present volume largely deals with the total naval and military "unpreparedness" (let no man ignorantly use such a vulgar and insufficient term as "want of preparation" !) of the United States for a serious maritime struggle. His historical illustrations of this topic give his book considerable literary interest, but his teachings of policy are often too misty • The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future. By Captain A. T. Mahan, D.C.L., LL.D.. United bta•es Navy. London: Sampson Low sod Co. [16s. 6d. net.] to carry conviction. If the staple of his argument is often hidden beneath a thread of a philosophical verbosity, which climbs in places to the altitudes of "King Cambyses' vein," the fog lifts occasionally, so as to give us glimpses of an actual programme. The modern game of colonial grab, says Captain Mahan, has brought the great sea- board Powers into contact on new boundaries, whose un- certain lines are a permanent source of international animosity and suspicion ; and these more distant burdens of disquietude are augmented by the risks arising from the "Yellow Peril" and the decadent condition of Turkey (from the dangers of the last-named volcano suitable means of escape were suggested by the Czar Nicholas fifty years ago!) From quarrels springing out of Old-World territorial jealousies America, not being a predominant partner, might escape; still, questions may arise beyond the sea which would com- pel her to maintain her interests or vindicate her honour by the arbitrament of war. "That which I deplore," says the author, "and which is a sober, just, and reasonable cause of deep national concern, is that the nation neither has nor cares to have its sea frontier so defended, and its navy of such power, as shall suffice, with the advantages of our position, to weigh seriously when inevitable discussions arise." Quoting the cases of Samoa and the Behring Sea, and anticipating the Oceanic problems that may arise on the excavation of the prospective Panama or Nicaragua "Isthmian" Canal, which would be "a military disaster" to his country, Captain Mahan asks if the United States can permit Hayti to cede to a foreign Power a naval station on the Windward passage to the Isthmus; or allow an important position on the Caribbean coasts or islands, now in suitably weak hands, to be sold to one of America's powerful rivals ; or wink at foreign interference with the Sandwich Islands; or suffer the "mailed fist" of Germany to descend on the Dutch island of Curacoa. If not, all the coasts and cities from Maine to Texas—now as good as defenceless—must be forti- fied against maritime attacks, dockyards must be constructed from north to south, harbours enlarged and protected by every available device, the whole being the mere background of a new creation of ships for coast defence, torpedo-boats, and ironclads of approved type, the cost of which, our author, if named President of the Union, would, as we understand him, call upon Congress to defray. Armed with such means of "looking outward," and provided with an adequate military force, the United States would proceed to " formulate " a somewhat extensive order, which is a leaf of the old Monroe doctrine writ large. They would proclaim it to mankind "an inviolable resolution of our national policy, that no foreign State should thenceforth acquire a coaling position within three thousand miles of San Francisco," — a rayon that takes in the Hawaian and Galapagos islands, with the coast of Central America. The reason for the proposed Ukase is that "the modern monsters of the deep die of inanition." As there is already a surplusage of foreign coal depots in the Caribbean and Atlantic, the North Pacific, at any rate, must be preserved from similar intrusions on the part of unauthorised Europe.
On Hawaii, the author is as plain-spoken as Senator Morgan, though he has not adopted that dignitary's dis- covery of the plot for the proclamation of a British pro- tectorate over the Sandwich group. One of his grounds for action by his country seems to be a little out of date. The great European Armies whose existence is so often deplored "may be providentially intended as a barrier" to an ulterior overflow from barbaric China, so that the general disarmament of which Utopians dream might be disastrous to the world's future. But China may explode eastward as well as westward, and, to meet this eventual development of the "Yellow Peril," the Sandwich Islands ought to be occupied, and provided with fitting integuments of Harvey steel and the like, and held by a great maritime Power, which of course can be none other than the United States. In justice to Captain Mahan, we must explain that these specu- lations on the advent of a new decline and fall of civilisation, or at least of possible perils, " Yellow " or European, in that direction, bear the date 1893, and that he has not retouched them. Admiration of the armed millions of the Continent, as more than once expressed in this volume, is very pre- valent amongst travelled Americans, many of whom
think with our author that the conscription system is a potent guarantee of European peace, an admirable engine for the promotion of general habits of thoroughness in work, discipline, and obedience to the law, and, in its effect on popular manners, an emollient of no mean efficacy. But Captain Mahan has an indictment to bring against the "aggressive military spirit" of the new Germany, for which he holds the nation, rather than its rulers, to be respon- sible. He forgets, however, that in the cases catalogued by him as illustrative of his thesis, the Wilhelmstrasse made liberal use of what Burke calls "balmy diplomatic diachylon " (their quarrel on the Carolina Islands, for instance, with Spain, was politely referred to the arbitra- tion of the Pope),—to the exclusion of that vocabulary of scorn and abuse in which certain Powers love to couch their representations to friendly States. The essay on "The Strategic Features of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico," which is full of useful nautical con- siderations, brings the "mailed fist" to the front again. Captain Mahan gives a lucid description of the main sea approaches to the Isthmus of Panama ; one of which, viz., the Transatlantic route, is flanked on the south, though at some distance, by the Dutch island of Curacoa. We read of "a floating apprehension that the German Empire, in its present desires of colonial extension, may be willing to absorb Holland for the sake of her still extensive colonial possessions." If this plot, adds Captain Mahan, sounds improbable, it is not much more incomprehensible than the German Emperor's "recent mysterious movements upon the European chess- board." The essay named is explicit on the eventual importance in a maritime war of the island of St. Thomas, the Danish sentinel on the Anegada passage between the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea. Of the arrangements for the sale of St. Thomas to Germany (of which a more plausible tale has been current than the myth relative to Cnracoa) our author takes no account. He examines in detail the strategical value of Jamaica and Cuba, fully expounding their command of the Windward passage, "through which lies the direct route from the Atlantic seaboard to th e Isthmus," and his exhaustive estimate of the unrivalled importance of the great natural citadel of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico is by no means calculated to close the months of those Americans who advocate the appropriation of the Spanish island by the United States.
Captain Mahan's cordial feelings towards this country are too well known to need renewed mention ; his references to what Tennyson calls "our rough island story" are always sympathetic, whether the incidents of our "road to glory," on which he comments, belong to the Little Britain of Elizabeth and Cromwell or to Greater Britain of our own day. Complying with the request of an American editor, certain personages of distinction advocated, in a series of articles, a formal political connection between the United States and the British Empire. The various proposi- tions for an "Anglo-American Reunion" recommended by his colleagues in the said symposium are called by Captain Mahan "clear, plain, businesslike." But, he says, while avoiding criticism of details, that in vain the net is spread in the sight of the birds, since "the ground is not prepared yet in the hearts and understandings of Americans, and I doubt whether in those of British citizens." We are afraid it is so, and that these essays will not extinguish Brother Jonathan's love for the pastime of twisting the Lion's tail. Regarding the present situation, the author warns his countrymen that although, by a dash at the Canadian-Pacific Railway, they can at any time block the communications between the St. Lawrence and Vancouver Island, all the harm that the United States could do the Dominion would be nothing to the injury which they themselves would suffer by the stoppage of their coasting trade, and the blockade of Boston, New York, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake.
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