2. That a navy "for defence only" means for the immediate defence of
our seaports and coast-line; an allowance also being made for
scattered cruisers to prey upon an enemy's commerce.
3. That if we go beyond this, by acquiring any territory overseas,
either by negotiation or conquest, we step at once to the need of
having a navy larger than the largest, which is that of Great Britain,
now the largest in the world.
4. That the difficulty of doing this, and the expense involved, are
the greater because of the rapid advances in naval improvement, which
it is gravely said make a ship obsolete in a very few years; or, to
use a very favorite hyperbole, she becomes obsolete before she can be
launched. The assertion of the rapid obsolescence of ships of war
will be dwelt upon, in the hopes of contravening it.
5. After this paper had been written, the calamity to the United
States ship _Maine_, in the harbor of Havana, elicited, from the
mourning and consternation of the country, the evident tokens of other
unreasoning apprehensions--springing from imperfect knowledge and
vague impressions--which at least should be noticed cursorily, and if
possible appeased.
_First_, the view that the United States should plan its navy--in
numbers and in sizes of ships--for defence only, rests upon a
confusion of ideas--a political idea and a military idea--under the
one term of "defence." Politically, it has always been assumed in the
United States, and very properly, that our policy should never be
wantonly aggressive; that we should never seek our own advantage,
however evident, by an unjust pressure upon another nation, much less
by open war. This, it will be seen, is a political idea, one which
serves for the guidance of the people and of the statesmen of the
country in determining--not _how_ war is to be carried on, which is a
military question, but--under what circumstances war is permissible,
or unjust. This is a question of civil policy, pure and simple, and by
no means a military question. As a nation, we have always vehemently
avowed that we will, and do, act justly; in practice, like other
states, and like mankind generally, when we have wanted anything very
badly, we have--at least at times--managed to see that it was just
that we should have it. In the matter of general policy our hands are
by no means clean from aggression. General Grant, after retiring from
public life, maintained that the war with Mexico was an unjust war; a
stigma which, if true, stains our possession of California and much
other territory. The acquisition of Louisiana was as great an outrage
upon the technical rights of Spain as the acquisition of Hawaii would
be upon the technical rights of the fast-disappearing aborigines; and
there can be little doubt that, although we did not go to war with
Spain to get Florida, we made things so uncomfortable for her that she
was practically forced at last to get out. It does not follow
necessarily that any of these actions were wrong, even if we consider
that the so-called _legal_ rights of Mexico and Spain were set aside
by the strong hand; for law is simply an invention of mankind to
secure justice, and when justice, the natural rights of the greater
number, is prevented by the legal, not the natural, rights of a few,
the latter may be set aside, as it is at every election, where large
minorities of people are forced to submit to what they consider
grievous wrong. The danger incurred by overleaping law to secure what
is right may be freely admitted; but no great responsibility, such as
the use of power always is, can be exercised at all without some
danger of abuse. However, be that as it may, there can be no question
that in times past we have aggressed upon the legal rights of other
states; and in the annexation of Louisiana we infringed the letter of
our own Constitution. We broke the law in order to reach an end
eminently beneficial to the majority of those concerned. Nevertheless,
while thus aggressive on occasion, warring for offence and not for
defence only, it is distinctly a good thing that we hold up the ideal,
and persuade ourselves that we cherish it; that we prepare means of
war only for defence. It is better honestly to profess a high
standard, even if we fall from it at times, than wilfully to adopt a
lower ideal of conduct.
The phrase "War for defence only" conveys, therefore, a political
idea, and, as such, a proper and noble idea. Unfortunately, in our
country, where almost all activities fall under two chief
heads--politics and business--politics, the less sensitively organized
but more forceful of the two, intrudes everywhere and masters
everything. We dread standing armies. Why? Because standing armies,
being organized masses of men, trained to obey capable leaders, may
overcome the resistance of a people which is far greater in numbers,
but unorganized. What are our politics now but organized masses of
men, habituated to obey their leaders, among whom to change their vote
is stigmatized as the treason of an Arnold, and between which the
popular will is driven helplessly from side to side, like a
shuttlecock between two battledores? Politics cleans our streets,
regulates our education, and so on; it is not to be wondered at that
it intrudes into the military sphere, with confidence all the greater
because it is there especially ignorant. Let there be no
misunderstanding, however. It is perfectly right that the policy of
the country should dictate the character and strength of the military
establishment; the evil is when policy is controlled by ignorance,
summed up in a mistaken but captivating catchword--"for defence only."
Among all masters of military art--including therein naval art--it is
a thoroughly accepted principle that mere defensive war means military
ruin, and therefore national disaster. It is vain to maintain a
military or naval force whose power is not equal to assuming the
offensive soon or late; which cannot, first or last, go out, assail
the enemy, and hurt him in his vital interests. A navy for defence
only, in the _political_ sense, means a navy that will only be used in
case we are forced into war; a navy for defence only, in the
_military_ sense, means a navy that can only await attack and defend
its own, leaving the enemy at ease as regards his own interests, and
at liberty to choose his own time and manner of fighting.
It is to be observed also that the most beneficial use of a military
force is not to _wage_ war, however successfully, but to _prevent_
war, with all its suffering, expense, and complication of
embarrassments. Of course, therefore, a navy for defence only, from
which an enemy need fear no harm, is of small account in diplomatic
relations, for it is nearly useless as a deterrent from war. Whatever
there may be in our conditions otherwise to prevent states from
attacking us, a navy "for defence only" will not add to them. For mere
harbor defence, fortifications are decisively superior to ships,
except where peculiar local conditions are found. All our greatest
cities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts can be locally defended better
by forts than by ships; but if, instead of a navy "for defence only,"
there be one so large that the enemy must send a great many ships
across the Atlantic, if he sends any, then the question whether he can
spare so great a number is very serious, considering the ever-critical
condition of European politics. Suppose, for instance, we could put
twenty battleships in commission for war in thirty days, and that we
had threatening trouble with either Germany, France, Great Britain, or
Russia. There is not one of these, except Great Britain, that could
afford to send over here twenty-five battleships, which would be the
very fewest needed, seeing the distance of their operations from
home; while Great Britain, relying wholly on her navy for the
integrity of her empire, equally cannot afford the hostility of a
nation having twenty battleships, and with whom her points of
difference are as inconsequential to her as they are with us.
It should be remembered, too, that any war which may arise with the
naval nations of Europe--or with Japan, which will soon rank with
them--will not be with reference to our own territories, but to our
external relations. In the Monroe doctrine, as now understood and
viewed in the light of the Venezuela incident, with the utterances
then made by our statesmen of all parties, we have on hand one of the
biggest contracts any modern state has undertaken. Nor may we
anticipate from other nations the easy acquiescence of Great Britain.
The way the latter sticks by Canada should warn us that we prevailed
in Venezuela because the matter to her was not worth war. Great
Britain is gorged with land. Her statesmen are weary of looking after
it, and of the persistence with which one advance compels another. It
is not so with Germany and France. The latter is traditionally our
friend, however, and her ambitions, even when she held Canada, have
ever pointed east rather than west. But how about Germany? It is the
fashion here to proclaim the Emperor a fool, for his shibboleth is
imperialistic and not republican; but if he be, it is with the folly
of the age on the European Continent--the hunger for ships, colonies,
and commerce, after which the great Napoleon so hankered, and upon
which the prosperity of Great Britain has been built.
Ships, colonies, commerce, mean to a European nation of to-day just
what our vast, half-improved, heavily tariffed territory means to us.
They mean to those nations room to expand, land wherewith to portion
off the sons and daughters that cannot find living space at home,
widespread political and international influence, through blood
affiliation with prosperous colonies, the power of which, in the
sentiment of brotherhood, received such illustration in the Queen's
Jubilee--one of the most majestic sights of the ages; for no Roman
triumph ever equalled for variety of interest the Jubilee, in which
not victorious force, but love, the all-powerful, was the tie that
knit the diversities of the great pageant into one coherent, living
whole. What political power is stable save that which holds men's
hearts? And what holds men's hearts like blood-relationship, permitted
free course and given occasional manifestation and exchange? German
colonies, like unto those of Great Britain--such is the foolish
day-dream of the German Emperor, if folly it be; but if he be a fool,
he knows at least that reciprocal advantage, reciprocal interests,
promote the exchange of kindly offices, by which has been kept alive
the love between Englishmen at home and Englishmen in the colonies. He
knows, also, that such advantages derive from power, from force--not
force exerted necessarily but force possessed--and that force, power,
depends not upon fleets and armies only, but upon positions also--war
being, as Napoleon used to say, "a business of positions"--one of
those pregnant phrases of the great captain upon which a man may
meditate many hours without exhausting it. A state that aims at
maritime power and at colonial empire, as Germany unquestionably--nay,
avowedly--now does, needs not only large and widely dispersed
colonies; she further needs influence upon those routes of commerce
which connect together countries and colonies, and for that she wants
possession of minor points, whose value is rather military than
commercial, but which essentially affect the control of the sea and of
the communications.
Now the secrets of the Emperor and of his more confidential advisers
are not all worn upon the sleeve, as might be inferred from the
audacity and apparent imprudence of occasional utterances. It is
known, however, not only from his words, which might be discounted,
but from his acts, that he wants a big navy, that he has meddled in
South Africa, and that he has on a slight pretext, but not, it may
well be believed, in any frivolous spirit, seized Kiao-chou, in China.
What all this means to himself can be only a matter of inference. The
present writer, after inquiring in quarters likely to be well
informed, has been able to obtain nothing more positive than
deductions, reasonably made, by men whose business it is to watch
current events in Europe; but the idea has long been forming in the
minds of political thinkers, looking not only upon the moves of the
political chess-board as they superficially appear in each day's news,
and are dictated largely by momentary emergencies, but seeking also to
detect the purpose and temperament of the players--be they men in
power or national tendencies--that the German Emperor is but
continuing and expanding a scheme of policy inherited from his
predecessors in the government of the state. Nay, more; it is thought
that this policy represents a tendency and a need of the German people
itself, in the movement towards national unity between its racial
constituents, in which so great an advance has already been
accomplished in the last thirty years. Elements long estranged, but of
the same blood, can in no way more surely attain to community of
interest and of view than by the development of an external policy, of
which the benefits and the pride may be common to all. True unity
requires some common object, around which diverse interests may cling
and crystallize. Nations, like families, need to look outside
themselves, if they would escape, on the one hand, narrow
self-satisfaction, or, on the other, pitiful internal dissensions.
The far-reaching external activities fostered in Great Britain by her
insular position have not only intensified patriotism, but have given
also a certain nobility of breadth to her statesmanship up to the
middle of this century.
Why, then, should not Germany, whose political unity was effected near
two centuries after that of Great Britain, do wisely in imitating a
policy whereby the older state has become an empire, that still
travels onward to a further and greater unity, which, if realized,
shall embrace in one fold remote quarters of the world? Where is the
folly of the one conception or of the other? The folly, if it prove
such, has as yet no demonstrable existence, save in the imaginations
of a portion of the people of the United States, who, clinging to
certain maxims of a century ago--when they were quite applicable--or
violently opposed to any active interest in matters outside our family
of States, find that those who differ from themselves are, if
Americans, jingoes, and if foreigners, like the present Emperor
William and Mr. Chamberlain, fools. The virtues and the powers of the
British and German peoples may prove unequal to their ambitions--time
alone can show; but it is a noble aim in their rulers to seek to
extend their influence, to establish their positions, and to knit them
together, in such wise that as races they may play a mighty part in
the world's history. The ambition is noble, even if it fail; if it
succeed, our posterity may take a different view of its folly, and of
our own wisdom in this generation.
For there are at least two steps, in other directions than those as
yet taken, by which the Emperor, when he feels strong enough at
sea--he is yet scarcely in middle life--might greatly and suddenly
increase the maritime empire of Germany, using means which are by no
means unprecedented, historically, but which would certainly arouse
vehement wrath in the United States, and subject to a severe test our
maxim of a navy for defence only. There is a large and growing German
colony in southern Brazil, and I am credibly informed that there is a
distinct effort to divert thither, by means direct and indirect, a
considerable part of the emigration which now comes to the United
States, and therefore is lost politically to Germany--for she has, of
course, no prospect of colonization here. The inference is that the
Emperor hopes at a future day, for which he is young enough to wait,
to find in southern Brazil a strong German population, which in due
time may seek to detach itself from the Brazilian Republic, as Texas
once detached itself from Mexico; and which may then seek political
union with Germany, as Texas sought political union with the United
States, to obtain support against her former owners and masters.
Without advancing any particular opinion as to the advisable
geographical limits of the Monroe doctrine, we may be pretty sure that
the American people would wordily resent an act which in our press
would be called "the aggression of a European military monarchy upon
the political or territorial rights of an American republic." This
also could be accompanied with the liberal denunciation of William II.
which now ornaments our editorial columns; but hard words break no
bones, and the practical question would remain, "What are you going to
do about it?" with a navy "for defence only." If you cannot offend
Germany, in the military sense of "offend"--that is, if you cannot
seek her out and _hurt_ her--how are you going to control her? In
contemplation of the future contingencies of our national policy, let
us contrast our own projected naval force with that now recommended to
the German Reichstag by the Budget Committee, despite the many
prophecies that the Emperor could not obtain his desired navy. "The
Budget Committee of the Reichstag to-day adopted, in accordance with
the government proposals, parts of the naval bill, fixing the number
of ships to be held in readiness for service as follows: 1 flagship,
18 battleships, 12 large cruisers, 30 small cruisers, 8 coast-defence
ironclads, and 13 gunboats, besides torpedo-boats, schoolships, and
small gunboats."[5] That these numbers were fixed with reference to
the United States is indeed improbable; but the United States should
take note.
A second means of expanding Germany as a colonial power would be to
induce the Dutch--who are the Germans of the lower Rhine and the North
Sea--to seek union with the German Empire, the empire of the Germans
of the upper Rhine, of the Elbe, and of the Baltic. This, it may be
said, would be far less difficult in consummation than the scheme last
suggested; for in Brazil, as in the United States and elsewhere, the
German emigrant tends to identify himself with the institutions he
finds around him, and shows little disposition to political
independence--a fact which emphasizes the necessity of strictly German
colonies, if the race, outside of Europe, is not to undergo political
absorption. The difficulties or the advantages which the annexation of
Holland might involve, as regards the political balance of power in
Europe, and the vast Asiatic colonies of the Dutch--Sumatra, Java, New
Guinea, etc.--are a consideration outside the present scope of
American policy; but the transaction would involve one little incident
as to which, unlike southern Brazil, a decided opinion may be
expressed, and that incident would be the transference of the island
of Curaçao, in the West Indies, to Germany. If Curaçao and its
political tenure do not fall within the purview of the Monroe
doctrine, the Monroe doctrine has no existence; for the island, though
small, has a wellnigh impregnable harbor, and lies close beside the
routes to the Central American Isthmus, which is to us what Egypt and
Suez are to England. But what objection can we urge, or what can we
do, with a navy "for defence only," in the military sense of the word
"defence"?
The way out of this confusion of thought, the logical method of
reconciling the political principle of non-aggression with a naval
power capable of taking the offensive, if necessary, is to recognize,
and to say, that defence means not merely defence of our territory,
but defence of our just national interests, whatever they be and
wherever they are. For example, the exclusion of direct European
political control from the Isthmus of Panama is as really a matter of
national defence as is the protection of New York Harbor. Take this as
the political meaning of the phrase "a navy for defence only," and
naval men, I think, must admit that it is no longer inapplicable as a
military phrase, but expresses adequately the naval needs of the
nation. But no military student can consider efficient a force so
limited, in quantity or in quality, that it must await attack before
it can act.
Now admitting this view as to the scope of the word "defence," what is
the best method of defending your interests when you know that
another intends to attack them? Is it to busy yourself with
precautions here, and precautions there, in every direction, to head
him off when he comes? Or is it to take the simpler means of so
preparing that you have the power to hurt him, and to make him afraid
that, if he moves, he will be the worse hurt of the two? In life
generally a man who means mischief is kept in check best by fear of
being hurt; if he has no more to dread than failure to do harm, no
reason to apprehend receiving harm, he will make his attempt. But
while this is probably true of life in general, it is notably true of
warfare. The state which in war relies simply upon defending itself,
instead of upon hurting the enemy, is bound to incur disaster, and for
the very simple reason that the party which proposes to strike a blow
has but one thing to do; whereas he who proposes only to ward off
blows has a dozen things, for he cannot know upon which interest, of a
dozen that he may have, the coming blow may fall. For this reason,
again, a "navy for defence only" is a wholly misleading phrase, unless
defence be construed to include _all_ national interests, and not only
the national territory; and further, unless it be understood that the
best defence of one's own interests is power to injure those of the
enemy.
In the summary of points to be dealt with has been included the
opinion that offensive action by a navy may be limited to merely
preying upon the enemy's commerce--that being considered not only a
real injury, but one great enough to bring him to peace. Concerning
this, it will suffice here to say that national maritime commerce does
not consist in a number of ships sprinkled, as by a pepper-pot, over
the surface of the ocean. Rightly viewed, it constitutes a great
system, with the strength and weakness of such. Its strength is that
possessed by all organized power, namely, that it can undergo a good
deal of local injury, such as scattered cruisers may inflict, causing
inconvenience and suffering, without receiving vital harm. A strong
man cannot be made to quit his work by sticking pins in him, or by
bruising his shins or blacking his eyes; he must be hit in a vital
part, or have a bone broken, to be laid up. The weaknesses of
commerce--the fatally vulnerable parts of its system--are the
commercial routes over which ships pass. They are the bones, the
skeleton, the framework of the organism. Hold them, break them, and
commerce falls with a crash, even though no ship is taken, but all
locked up in safe ports. But to effect this is not the work of
dispersed cruisers picking up ships here and there, as birds pick up
crumbs, but of vessels massed into powerful fleets, holding the sea,
or at the least making the highways too dangerous for use. A navy so
planned is for defence indeed, in the true sense that the best defence
is to crush your enemy by depriving him of the use of the sea.
We now come to the assertion that if the United States takes to itself
interests beyond the sea--of which Hawaii is an instance--it not only
adds to its liabilities, which is true, but incurs an unnecessary
exposure, to guard against which we need no less than the greatest
navy in the world.
It might be retorted that, willy-nilly, we already, by general
national consent, have accepted numerous external interests--embraced
under the Monroe doctrine; and that, as regards Hawaii, many even who
reject annexation admit that our interests will not tolerate any other
nation taking those islands. But how shall we enforce even that
limited amount of interest if any other power--Great Britain, Germany,
or Japan--decide to take, and the islanders acquiesce? In such cases
we should even be worse off, militarily, than with annexation
completed. Let us, however, put aside this argument--of the many
already existing external interests--and combat this allegation, that
an immense navy would be needed, by recurring to the true military
conception of defence already developed. The subject will thus tend to
unity of treatment, centring round that word "defence." Effective
defence does not consist primarily in power to protect, but in power
to injure. A man's defence against a snake, if cornered--if he must
have to do with it--is not to protect himself, but to kill the snake.
If a snake got into the room, as often happens in India, the position
should not be estimated by ability to get out of the room one's self,
but by power to get rid of the snake. In fact, a very interesting
illustration of the true theory of defence is found in a casual remark
in a natural history about snakes--that comparatively few are
dangerous to man, but that the whole family is protected by the fear
those few inspire. If attacked by a dog, safety is not sought chiefly
in the means of warding him off, but by showing him the means
possessed of hurting him, as by picking up a stone; and with a man,
where an appeal lies to the intelligence, the argument from power to
injure is peculiarly strong. If a burglar, thinking to enter a room,
knows that he may--or will--kill the occupant, but that the latter may
break his leg, he will not enter. The game would not be worth the
candle.
Apply this thought now to the United States and its naval needs. As
Great Britain is by very far the greatest naval power, let us take her
to be the supposed enemy. If we possessed the Hawaiian Islands, and
war unhappily broke out with Great Britain, she could now, if she
desired, take them without trouble, so far as our navy is concerned;
so could France; so possibly, five years hence, could Japan. That is,
under our present conditions of naval weakness, either France or Great
Britain could spare ships enough to overcome our force, without
fatally crippling her European fleet; whereas, were our navy half the
size of the British, she could not afford to send half her fleet so
far away from home; nor, if we had half ours in the Pacific and half
in the Atlantic, could she afford to send one-third or one-fourth of
her entire navy so far from her greater interests, independent of the
fact that, even if victorious, it would be very badly used before our
force was defeated. Hawaii is not worth that to Great Britain; whereas
it is of so much consequence to us that, even if lost, it would
probably be returned at a peace, as Martinique and Guadeloupe
invariably have been to France. Great Britain would not find its value
equivalent to our resentment at her holding it. Now the argument as to
the British fleet is still stronger as to France, for she is as
distant as Great Britain and has a smaller navy. The argument is
different as regards Japan, for she is nearer by far than they, only
half as far again as we, and that power has recently given us an
intimation which, if we disregard, we do so in face of the facts. Her
remonstrance about the annexation of Hawaii, however far it went, gave
us fair warning that a great naval state was about to come into being
in the Pacific, prepared to watch, and perhaps to contest, our action
in what we thought our interests demanded. From that instant the navy
of Japan becomes a standard, showing, whether we annex the islands or
not, a minimum beneath which our Pacific fleet cannot be allowed to
fall, without becoming a "navy for defence only," in the very worst
sense.
This brief train of reasoning will suggest why it is not necessary to
have a navy equal to the greatest, in order to insure that sense of
fear which deters a rival from war, or handicaps his action in war.
The biggest navy that ever existed cannot all be sent on one mission,
in any probable state of the political world. A much smaller force,
favorably placed, produces an effect far beyond its proportionate
numbers; for, to quote again Napoleon's phrase, "War is a business of
positions." This idea is by no means new, even to unprofessional men;
on the contrary, it is so old that it is deplorable to see such
fatuous arguments as the necessity of equalling Great Britain's navy
adduced against any scheme of external policy. The annexation of
Hawaii, to recur to that, may be bad policy for many reasons, of which
I am no good judge; but, as a naval student, I hesitate not to say
that, while annexation _may_ entail a bigger navy than is demanded
for the mere exclusion of other states from the islands--though I
personally do not think so--it is absurd to say that we should need a
navy equal to that of Great Britain. In 1794 Gouverneur Morris wrote
that if the United States had twenty ships of the line in commission,
no other state would provoke her enmity. At that time Great Britain's
navy was relatively more powerful than it is now, while she and France
were rivalling each other in testing the capacity of our country to
stand kicking; but Morris's estimate was perfectly correct, and shows
how readily a sagacious layman can understand a military question, if
only he will put his mind to it, and not merely echo the press. Great
Britain then could not--and much more France could not--afford to have
twenty ships of the line operating against her interests on the other
side of the Atlantic. They could not afford it in actual war; they
could not afford it even in peace, because not only might war arise at
any time, but it would be much more likely to happen if either party
provoked the United States to hostility. The mere menace of such a
force, its mere existence, would have insured decent treatment
without war; and Morris, who was an able financier, conjectured that
to support a navy of such size for twenty years would cost the public
treasury less than five years of war would,--not to mention the
private losses of individuals in war.
All policy that involves external action is sought to be discredited
by this assertion, that it entails the expense of a navy equal to the
greatest now existing on the sea, no heed being given to the fact that
we already have assumed such external responsibilities, if any weight
is to be attached to the evident existence of a strong popular feeling
in favor of the Monroe doctrine, or to Presidential or Congressional
utterances in the Venezuela business, or in that of Hawaii. The
assertion is as old as the century; as is also the complementary
ignorance of the real influence of an inferior military or naval force
in contemporary policy, when such force either is favored by position,
or can incline decisively, to one side or the other, the scales in a
doubtful balance. To such misapprehensions we owed, in the early part
of this century, the impressment of hundreds of American seamen, and
the despotic control of our commerce by foreign governments; to this,
the blockading of our coasts, the harrying of the shores of Chesapeake
Bay, the burning of Washington, and a host of less remembered
attendant evils. All these things might have been prevented by the
timely maintenance of a navy of tolerable strength, deterring the
warring powers from wanton outrage.
In the present day the argument that none but the greatest navy is of
any avail, and that such is too expensive for us to contemplate--as it
probably is--is re-enforced by the common statement that the ship
built to-day becomes obsolete in an extremely short time, the period
stated being generally a rhetorical figure rather than an exact
estimate. The word "obsolete" itself is used here vaguely. Strictly,
it means no more than "gone out of use;" but it is understood,
correctly, I think, to mean "become useless." A lady's bonnet may
become obsolete, being gone out of use because no longer in fashion,
though it may still be an adequate head-covering; but an obsolete ship
of war can only be one that is put out of use because it is useless. A
ship momentarily out of use, because not needed, is no more obsolete
than a hat hung up when the owner comes in. When a ship is called
obsolete, therefore, it is meant that she is out of use for the same
reason that many old English words are--because they are no longer
good for their purpose; their meaning being lost to mankind in
general, they no longer serve for the exchange of thought.
In this sense the obsolescence of modern ships of war is just one of
those half-truths which, as Tennyson has it, are ever the worst of
lies; it is harder to meet and fight outright than an unqualified
untruth. It is true that improvement is continually going on in the
various parts of the complex mechanism which constitutes a modern ship
of war; although it is also true that many changes are made which are
not improvements, and that reversion to an earlier type, the
abandonment of a once fancied improvement, is no unprecedented
incident in recent naval architecture and naval ordnance. The
revulsion from the monitor, the turreted ship pure and simple, to the
broadside battery analogous to that carried by the old ships of
Farragut and Nelson, is one of the most singular and interesting
changes in men's thoughts that the writer has met, either in his
experience or in his professional reading. The day can be recalled
when the broadside battleship was considered as dead as
Cock-Robin--her knell was rung, and herself buried without honors;
yet, not only has she revived, but I imagine that I should have a very
respectable following among naval officers now in believing, as I do,
that the broadside guns, and not those in the turrets, are the primary
battery of the ship--primary, I mean, in fighting value. Whatever the
worth of this opinion,--which is immaterial to the present
contention,--a change so radical as from broadside battery to turreted
ships, and from the latter back to broadside, though without entirely
giving up turrets, should cause some reasonable hesitancy in imputing
obsoleteness to any armored steamship. The present battleship
reproduces, in essential principles, the ships that preceded the
epoch-making monitor--the pivot guns of the earlier vessels being
represented by the present turrets, and their broadsides by the
present broadside. The prevalence of the monitor type was an
interlude, powerfully affecting the development of navies, but making
nothing obsolete. It did not effect a revolution, but a
modification--much as homoeopathy did in the "regular practice."
There is, of course, a line on one side of which the term "obsolete"
applies, but it may be said that no ship is obsolete for which
fighting-work can be found, with a tolerable chance--a fighting
chance--of her being successful; because, though unequal to this or
that position of exposure, she, by occupying an inferior one, releases
a better ship. And here again we must guard ourselves from thinking
that inferior force--inferior in number or inferior in quality--has
_no_ chance against a superior. The idea is simply another phase of "a
navy equal to the greatest," another military heresy. A ship under the
guns of one thrice her force, from which her speed cannot carry her,
is doubtless a lost ship. She may be called even obsolete, though she
be the last product of naval science, just from a dock-yard. Before
such extreme conditions are reached, however, by a ship or a fleet,
many other factors than merely relative force come into play;
primarily, man, with all that his personality implies--skill,
courage, discipline,--after that, chance, opportunity, accidents of
time, accidents of place, accidents of ground,--the whole
unforeseeable chapter of incidents which go to form military history.
A military situation is made up of many factors, and before a ship can
be called obsolete, useless to the great general result, it must be
determined that she can contribute no more than zero to either side of
the equation--or of the inequality. From the time she left the hands
of the designers, a unit of maximum value, throughout the period of
her gradual declension, many years will elapse during which a ship
once first-rate will be an object of consideration to friend and foe.
She will wear out like a garment, but she does not necessarily become
obsolete till worn out. It may be added that the indications now are
that radical changes of design are not to be expected shortly, and
that we have reached a type likely to endure. A ship built five years
hence may have various advantages of detail over one now about to be
launched, but the chances are they will not be of a kind that reverse
the odds of battle. This, of course, is only a forecast, not an
assertion; a man who has witnessed the coming and going of the monitor
type will forbear prophecy.
Now, as always, the best ships in the greatest number, as on shore the
best troops in the greatest masses, will be carried as speedily as
possible, and maintained as efficiently as possible, on the front of
operations. But in various directions and at various points behind
that front there are other interests to be subserved, by vessels of
inferior class, as garrisons may be made up wholly or in part of
troops no longer well fitted for the field. But should disaster occur,
or the foe prove unexpectedly strong, the first line of reserved ships
will move forward to fill the gaps, analogous in this to the various
corps of reserved troops who have passed their first youth, with which
the Continental organizations of military service have made us
familiar. This possibility has been recognized so well by modern naval
men that some even have looked for decisive results, not at the hands
of the first and most powerful ships, but from the readiness and
number of those which have passed into the reserve, and will come into
play after the first shock of war. That a reserve force should decide
a doubtful battle or campaign is a frequent military experience--an
instance of superior staying power.
There is no reason, therefore, to worry about a ship becoming
obsolete, any more than there is over the fact that the best suit of
to-day may be that for the office next year, and may finally descend
to a dependent, or be cut down for a child. Whatever money a nation is
willing to spend on maintaining its first line of ships, it is not
weaker, but stronger, when one of these drops into the reserve and is
replaced by a newer ship. The great anxiety, in truth, is not lest the
ships should not continue valid, but lest there be not trained men
enough to man both the first line and the reserve.
Here the present article, as at first contemplated, would have closed;
but the recent disaster to the _Maine_ has produced its own crop of
sudden and magnified apprehensions. These, to the professional mind,
are necessarily a matter of concern, but chiefly because they have
showed the seeds of a popular distrust before sown in men's minds. As
evinced, however, they too are fallacies born of imperfect knowledge.
The magnitude of the calamity was indisputable; but the calm
self-possession of the nation and of the better portion of the press,
face to face with the possible international troubles that might
ensue, contrasted singularly with the unreasoned imaginations that
immediately found voice concerning the nature and dangers of
battleships. The political self-possession and dignity reposed upon
knowledge--not, indeed, of the eventual effect upon our international
relations--but knowledge, bred of long acquaintance with public
affairs, that, before further action, there must be investigation; and
that after investigation, action, if it must follow, would be taken
with due deliberation. So men were content to wait for justice to
pursue its even course.
But the fact that such an appalling catastrophe had befallen one
battleship fell upon the minds imperfectly informed in naval matters,
and already possessed by various exaggerated impressions, loosely
picked up from time to time. Men knew not what to think, and so
thought the worst--as we are all apt to do when in the dark. It is
possible that naval officers, being accustomed to live over a
magazine, and ordinarily to eat their meals within a dozen yards of
the powder, may have a too great, though inevitable, familiarity with
the conditions. There is, however, no contempt for them among us; and
the precautions taken are so well known, the remoteness of danger so
well understood, that it is difficult to comprehend the panic terror
that found utterance in the remarks of some men, presumably well
informed on general matters. It is evidently a very long and quite
illogical step to infer that, because the results of an accident may
be dreadful, therefore the danger of the accident occurring at all is
very great. On land, a slight derangement of a rail, a slight obstacle
on a track, the breaking of a wheel or of an axle, may plunge a
railroad train to frightful disaster; but we know from annual
experience that while such accidents do happen, and sometimes with
appalling consequences, the chance of their happening in a particular
case is so remote that we disregard it. At sea, every day of every
year for centuries back, a couple of hundred warships--to speak
moderately--have been traversing the ocean or lying in port, like the
_Maine_, with abundance of powder on board; and for the last quarter
of a century very many of these have been, and now are, essentially of
the type of that unfortunate vessel. The accident that befell her, if
its origin be precisely determined, may possibly impose some further
precaution not hitherto taken; but whatever the cause may prove to
have been, it is clear that the danger of such an event happening is
at no time great, because it is almost, if not quite, unprecedented
among the great number of warships now continuously in service.
Similarly, on the seas, the disasters to the _Ville du Havre_, to the
_Oregon_, and, only three years ago, to the _Elbe_, show the terrific
results of collision, to which every ship crossing the ocean is
liable. Collisions between vessels less known than those named are of
weekly occurrence. Yet no general outcry is raised against the general
safety of the transatlantic liners. People unconsciously realize that,
where accidents are so infrequent, the risk to themselves in the
individual case is slight, though the results, when they happen, are
dreadful. Men know instinctively that the precautions taken must be
practically adequate, or safety would not be the almost universal rule
which it is.
It should be remembered, too, that the present battleship is not a
sudden invention, springing up in a night, like Jonah's gourd, or
newly contrived by a council sitting for the purpose, like a brand-new
Constitution of the French Revolution. The battleship of to-day is the
outcome of a gradual evolution extending over forty years. Its
development has been governed by experience, showing defects or
suggesting improvements; and the entire process has been superintended
by men of the highest practical and scientific intelligence, naval
architects and seamen, constantly exchanging ideas, not only with
their own countrymen, but, through the scientific publications of the
day, with the whole world. What Ruskin said of the old ship of the
line is still more true of the modern battleship: no higher exhibition
of man's creative faculties is probably anywhere to be found. In view,
therefore, of its genesis, and of the practical results of yearly
cruisings, the battleship in its service of peace is entitled to the
confidence we give to the work of competent men in all departments;
nor should that confidence be withdrawn because of a single
occurrence, if the _Maine_ prove to have fallen victim to internal
accident. If, on the other hand, her destruction proceeded from an
external cause,--that is, if she fell as ships fall in war,--it may
safely be said that, in actions between ships, no means of injury now
in use on shipboard could effect the instantaneous and widespread
destruction manifested in her case, unless by a shell finding its way
to her magazine. This is a remote possibility, though it exists; but
when it comes to fighting, men must remember that it is not possible
to make war without running risks, and that it is highly improbable
that one-tenth as many seamen will die from the explosion of their own
magazines, so occasioned, as from the direct blow of the enemy's
projectiles.
NOTE.--Since this article was written, in January, 1898, it
has become known that the attitude of Japan towards the
United States, regarded as a power of the Pacific, has been
reversed, and that--as already remarked in the preface to
this volume--her leading statesmen, instead of resenting the
annexation of Hawaii, now welcome cordially the advance of
the United States to the Philippines. This change, occurring
as it has within four years, affords a striking indication
of the degree to which the attention of mankind has been
aroused by the character of Russia's progress in northeastern
Asia, and upon the Pacific, as well as of the influence
thereby exerted upon the currents of men's thoughts, and upon
international relations.