_June, 1895._
That the United States Navy within the last dozen years should have
been recast almost wholly, upon more modern lines, is not, in itself
alone, a fact that should cause comment, or give rise to questions
about its future career or sphere of action. If this country needs, or
ever shall need, a navy at all, indisputably in 1883 the hour had come
when the time-worn hulks of that day, mostly the honored but
superannuated survivors of the civil war, should drop out of the
ranks, submit to well-earned retirement or inevitable dissolution, and
allow their places to be taken by other vessels, capable of performing
the duties to which they themselves were no longer adequate.
It is therefore unlikely that there underlay this re-creation of the
navy--for such in truth it was--any more recondite cause than the
urgent necessity of possessing tools wholly fit for the work which
war-ships are called upon to do. The thing had to be done, if the
national fleet was to be other than an impotent parody of naval force,
a costly effigy of straw. But, concurrently with the process of
rebuilding, there has been concentrated upon the development of the
new service a degree of attention, greater than can be attributed even
to the voracious curiosity of this age of newsmongering and of
interviewers. This attention in some quarters is undisguisedly
reluctant and hostile, in others not only friendly but expectant, in
both cases betraying a latent impression that there is, between the
appearance of the new-comer and the era upon which we now are
entering, something in common. If such coincidence there be, however,
it is indicative not of a deliberate purpose, but of a commencing
change of conditions, economical and political, throughout the world,
with which sea power, in the broad sense of the phrase, will be
associated closely; not, indeed, as the cause, nor even chiefly as a
result, but rather as the leading characteristic of activities which
shall cease to be mainly internal, and shall occupy themselves with
the wider interests that concern the relations of states to the world
at large. And it is just at this point that the opposing lines of
feeling divide. Those who hold that our political interests are
confined to matters within our own borders, and are unwilling to admit
that circumstances may compel us in the future to political action
without them, look with dislike and suspicion upon the growth of a
body whose very existence indicates that nations have international
duties as well as international rights, and that international
complications will arise from which we can no more escape than the
states which have preceded us in history, or those contemporary with
us. Others, on the contrary, regarding the conditions and signs of
these times, and the extra-territorial activities in which foreign
states have embarked so restlessly and widely, feel that the nation,
however greatly against its wish, may become involved in controversies
not unlike those which in the middle of the century caused very
serious friction, but which the generation that saw the century open
would have thought too remote for its concern, and certainly wholly
beyond its power to influence.
Religious creeds, dealing with eternal verities, may be susceptible of
a certain permanency of statement; yet even here we in this day have
witnessed the embarrassments of some religious bodies, arising from a
traditional adherence to merely human formulas, which reflect views of
the truth as it appeared to the men who framed them in the distant
past. But political creeds, dealing as they do chiefly with the
transient and shifting conditions of a world which is passing away
continually, can claim no fixity of allegiance, except where they
express, not the policy of a day, but the unchanging dictates of
righteousness. And inasmuch as the path of ideal righteousness is not
always plain nor always practicable; as expediency, policy, the choice
of the lesser evil, must control at times; as nations, like men, will
occasionally differ, honestly but irreconcilably, on questions of
right,--there do arise disputes where agreement cannot be reached, and
where the appeal must be made to force, that final factor which
underlies the security of civil society even more than it affects the
relations of states. The well-balanced faculties of Washington saw
this in his day with absolute clearness. Jefferson either would not or
could not. That there should be no navy was a cardinal prepossession
of his political thought, born of an exaggerated fear of organized
military force as a political, factor. Though possessed with a passion
for annexation which dominated much of his political action, he
prescribed as the limit of the country's geographical expansion the
line beyond which it would entail the maintenance of a navy. Yet fate,
ironical here as elsewhere in his administration, compelled the
recognition that, unless a policy of total seclusion is adopted,--if
even then,--it is not necessary to acquire territory beyond sea in
order to undergo serious international complications, which could have
been avoided much more easily had there been an imposing armed
shipping to throw into the scale of the nation's argument, and to
compel the adversary to recognize the impolicy of his course as well
as what the United States then claimed to be its wrongfulness.
The difference of conditions between the United States of to-day and
of the beginning of this century illustrates aptly how necessary it is
to avoid implicit acceptance of precedents, crystallized into maxims,
and to seek for the quickening principle which justified, wholly or in
part, the policy of one generation, but whose application may insure a
very different course of action in a succeeding age. When the century
opened, the United States was not only a continental power, as she now
is, but she was one of several, of nearly equal strength as far as
North America was concerned, with all of whom she had differences
arising out of conflicting interests, and with whom, moreover, she was
in direct geographical contact,--a condition which has been recognized
usually as entailing peculiar proneness to political friction; for,
while the interests of two nations may clash in quarters of the world
remote from either, there is both greater frequency and greater
bitterness when matters of dispute exist near at home, and especially
along an artificial boundary, where the inhabitants of each are
directly in contact with the causes of the irritation. It was
therefore the natural and proper aim of the government of that day to
abolish the sources of difficulty, by bringing all the territory in
question under our own control, if it could be done by fair means. We
consequently entered upon a course of action precisely such as a
European continental state would have followed under like
circumstances. In order to get possession of the territory in which
our interests were involved, we bargained and manoeuvred and
threatened; and although Jefferson's methods were peaceful enough, few
will be inclined to claim that they were marked by excess of
scrupulousness, or even of adherence to his own political convictions.
From the highly moral standpoint, the acquisition of Louisiana under
the actual conditions--being the purchase from a government which had
no right to sell, in defiance of the remonstrance addressed to us by
the power who had ceded the territory upon the express condition that
it should not so be sold, but which was too weak to enforce its just
reclamation against both Napoleon and ourselves--reduces itself pretty
much to a choice between overreaching and violence, as the less
repulsive means of compassing an end in itself both desirable and
proper; nor does the attempt, by strained construction, to wrest West
Florida into the bargain give a higher tone to the transaction. As a
matter of policy, however, there is no doubt that our government was
most wise; and the transfer, as well as the incorporation, of the
territory was facilitated by the meagreness of the population that
went with the soil. With all our love of freedom, it is not likely
that many qualms were felt as to the political inclinations of the
people concerning their transfer of allegiance. In questions of great
import to nations or to the world, the wishes, or interests, or
technical rights, of minorities must yield, and there is not
necessarily any more injustice in this than in their yielding to a
majority at the polls.
While the need of continental expansion pressed thus heavily upon the
statesmen of Jefferson's era, questions relating to more distant
interests were very properly postponed. At the time that matters of
such immediate importance were pending, to enter willingly upon the
consideration of subjects our concern in which was more remote, either
in time or place, would have entailed a dissemination of attention and
of power that is as greatly to be deprecated in statesmanship as it is
in the operations of war. Still, while the government of the day would
gladly have avoided such complications, it found, as have the
statesmen of all times, that if external interests exist, whatsoever
their character, they cannot be ignored, nor can the measures which
prudence dictates for their protection be neglected with safety.
Without political ambitions outside the continent, the commercial
enterprise of the people brought our interests into violent antagonism
with clear, unmistakable, and vital interests of foreign belligerent
states; for we shall sorely misread the lessons of 1812, and of the
events which led to it, if we fail to see that the questions in
dispute involved issues more immediately vital to Great Britain, in
her then desperate struggle, than they were to ourselves, and that the
great majority of her statesmen and people, of both parties, so
regarded them. The attempt of our government to temporize with the
difficulty, to overcome violence by means of peaceable coercion,
instead of meeting it by the creation of a naval force so strong as to
be a factor of consideration in the international situation, led us
into an avoidable war.
The conditions which now constitute the political situation of the
United States, relatively to the world at large, are fundamentally
different from those that obtained at the beginning of the century. It
is not a mere question of greater growth, of bigger size. It is not
only that we are larger, stronger, have, as it were, reached our
majority, and are able to go out into the world. That alone would be a
difference of degree, not of kind. The great difference between the
past and the present is that we then, as regards close contact with
the power of the chief nations of the world, were really in a state of
political isolation which no longer exists. This arose from our
geographical position--reinforced by the slowness and uncertainty of
the existing means of intercommunication--and yet more from the grave
preoccupation of foreign statesmen with questions of unprecedented and
ominous importance upon the continent of Europe. A policy of isolation
was for us then practicable,--though even then only partially. It was
expedient, also, because we were weak, and in order to allow the
individuality of the nation time to accentuate itself. Save the
questions connected with the navigation of the Mississippi, collision
with other peoples was only likely to arise, and actually did arise,
from going beyond our own borders in search of trade. The reasons now
evoked by some against our political action outside our own borders
might have been used then with equal appositeness against our
commercial enterprises. Let us stay at home, or we shall get into
trouble. Jefferson, in truth, averse in principle to commerce as to
war, was happily logical in his embargo system. It not only punished
the foreigner and diminished the danger of international
complications, but it kept our own ships out of harm's way; and if it
did destroy trade, and cause the grass to grow in the streets of New
York, the incident, if inconvenient, had its compensations, by
repressing hazardous external activities.
Few now, of course, would look with composure upon a policy, whatever
its ground, which contemplated the peaceable seclusion of this nation
from its principal lines of commerce. In 1807, however, a great party
accepted the alternative rather than fight, or even than create a
force which might entail war, although more probably it would have
prevented it. But would it be more prudent now to ignore the fact that
we are no longer--however much we may regret it--in a position of
insignificance or isolation, political or geographical, in any way
resembling the times of Jefferson, and that from the changed
conditions may result to us a dilemma similar to that which confronted
him and his supporters? Not only have we grown,--that is a
detail,--but the face of the world is changed, economically and
politically. The sea, now as always the great means of communication
between nations, is traversed with a rapidity and a certainty that
have minimized distances. Events which under former conditions would
have been distant and of small concern, now happen at our doors and
closely affect us. Proximity, as has been noted, is a fruitful source
of political friction, but proximity is the characteristic of the age.
The world has grown smaller. Positions formerly distant have become to
us of vital importance from their nearness. But, while distances have
shortened, they remain for us water distances, and, however short, for
political influence they must be traversed in the last resort by a
navy, the indispensable instrument by which, when emergencies arise,
the nation can project its power beyond its own shore-line.
Whatever seeming justification, therefore, there may have been in the
transient conditions of his own day for Jefferson's dictum concerning
a navy, rested upon a state of things that no longer obtains, and even
then soon passed away. The War of 1812 demonstrated the usefulness of
a navy,--not, indeed, by the admirable but utterly unavailing
single-ship victories that illustrated its course, but by the
prostration into which our seaboard and external communications fell,
through the lack of a navy at all proportionate to the country's needs
and exposure. The navy doubtless reaped honor in that brilliant sea
struggle, but the honor was its own alone; only discredit accrued to
the statesmen who, with such men to serve them, none the less left the
country open to the humiliation of its harried coasts and blasted
commerce. Never was there a more lustrous example of what Jomini calls
"the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them." Except for
the prestige which at last awoke the country to the high efficiency of
the petty force we called our navy, and showed what the sea might be
to us, never was blood spilled more uselessly than in the frigate and
sloop actions of that day. They presented no analogy to the outpost
and reconnoissance fighting, to the detached services, that are not
only inevitable but invaluable, in maintaining the _morale_ of a
military organization in campaign. They were simply scattered efforts,
without relation either to one another or to any main body whatsoever,
capable of affecting seriously the issues of war, or, indeed, to any
plan of operations worthy of the name.
Not very long after the War of 1812, within the space of two
administrations, there came another incident, epoch-making in the
history of our external policy, and of vital bearing on the navy, in
the enunciation of the Monroe doctrine. That pronouncement has been
curiously warped at times from its original scope and purpose. In its
name have been put forth theories so much at odds with the relations
of states, as hitherto understood, that, if they be maintained
seriously, it is desirable in the interests of exact definition that
their supporters advance some other name for them. It is not necessary
to attribute finality to the Monroe doctrine, any more than to any
other political dogma, in order to deprecate the application of the
phrase to propositions that override or transcend it. We should beware
of being misled by names, and especially where such error may induce a
popular belief that a foreign state is outraging wilfully a principle
to the defence of which the country is committed. We have been
committed to the Monroe doctrine itself, not perhaps by any such
formal assumption of obligations as cannot be evaded, but by certain
precedents, and by a general attitude, upon the whole consistently
maintained, from which we cannot recede silently without risk of
national mortification. If seriously challenged, as in Mexico by the
third Napoleon, we should hardly decline to emulate the sentiments so
nobly expressed by the British government, when, in response to the
emperors of Russia and France, it declined to abandon the struggling
Spanish patriots to the government set over them by Napoleon: "To
Spain his Majesty is not bound by any formal instrument; but his
Majesty has, in the face of the world, contracted with that nation
engagements not less sacred, and not less binding upon his Majesty's
mind, than the most solemn treaties." We may have to accept also
certain corollaries which may appear naturally to result from the
Monroe doctrine, but we are by no means committed to some propositions
which lately have been tallied with its name. Those propositions
possibly embody a sound policy, more applicable to present conditions
than the Monroe doctrine itself, and therefore destined to succeed it;
but they are not the same thing. There is, however, something in
common between it and them. Reduced to its barest statement, and
stripped of all deductions, natural or forced, the Monroe doctrine, if
it were not a mere political abstraction, formulated an idea to which
in the last resort effect could be given only through the
instrumentality of a navy; for the gist of it, the kernel of the
truth, was that the country had at that time distant interests on the
land, political interests of a high order in the destiny of foreign
territory, of which a distinguishing characteristic was that they
could be assured only by sea.
Like most stages in a nation's progress, the Monroe doctrine, though
elicited by a particular political incident, was not an isolated step
unrelated to the past, but a development. It had its antecedents in
feelings which arose before our War of Independence, and which in
1778, though we were then in deadly need of the French alliance, found
expression in the stipulation that France should not attempt to regain
Canada. Even then, and also in 1783, the same jealousy did not extend
to the Floridas, which at the latter date were ceded by Great Britain
to Spain; and we expressly acquiesced in the conquest of the British
West India Islands by our allies. From that time to 1815 no
remonstrance was made against the transfer of territories in the West
Indies and Caribbean Sea from one belligerent to another--an
indifference which scarcely would be shown at the present time, even
though the position immediately involved were intrinsically of trivial
importance; for the question at stake would be one of principle, of
consequences, far reaching as Hampden's tribute of ship-money.
It is beyond the professional province of a naval officer to inquire
how far the Monroe doctrine itself would logically carry us, or how
far it may be developed, now or hereafter, by the recognition and
statement of further national interests, thereby formulating another
and wider view of the necessary range of our political influence. It
is sufficient to quote its enunciation as a fact, and to note that it
was the expression of a great national interest, not merely of a
popular sympathy with South American revolutionists; for, had it been
the latter, it would doubtless have proved as inoperative and
evanescent as declarations arising from such emotions commonly are.
From generation to generation we have been much stirred by the
sufferings of Greeks, or Bulgarians, or Armenians, at the hands of
Turkey; but, not being ourselves injuriously affected, our feelings
have not passed into acts, and for that very reason have been
ephemeral. No more than other nations are we exempt from the profound
truth enunciated by Washington--seared into his own consciousness by
the bitter futilities of the French alliance in 1778 and the following
years, and by the extravagant demands based upon it by the Directory
during his Presidential term--that it is absurd to expect governments
to act upon disinterested motives. It is not as an utterance of
passing concern, benevolent or selfish, but because it voiced an
enduring principle of necessary self-interest, that the Monroe
doctrine has retained its vitality, and has been made so easily to do
duty as the expression of intuitive national sensitiveness to
occurrences of various kinds in regions beyond the sea. At its
christening the principle was directed against an apprehended
intervention in American affairs, which depended not upon actual
European concern in the territory involved, but upon a purely
political arrangement between certain great powers, itself the result
of ideas at the time moribund. In its first application, therefore, it
was a confession that danger of European complications did exist,
under conditions far less provocative of real European interest than
those which now obtain and are continually growing. Its subsequent
applications have been many and various, and the incidents giving rise
to them have been increasingly important, culminating up to the
present in the growth of the United States to be a great Pacific
power, and in her probable dependence in the near future upon an
Isthmian canal for the freest and most copious intercourse between her
two ocean seaboards. In the elasticity and flexibleness with which the
dogma thus has accommodated itself to varying conditions, rather than
in the strict wording of the original statement, is to be seen the
essential characteristic of a living principle--the recognition,
namely, that not merely the interests of individual citizens, but the
interests of the United States as a nation, are bound up with regions
beyond the sea, not part of our own political domain, in which
therefore, under some imaginable circumstances, we may be forced to
take action.
It is important to recognize this, for it will help clear away the
error from a somewhat misleading statement frequently made,--that the
United States needs a navy for defence only, adding often,
explanatorily, for the defence of our own coasts. Now in a certain
sense we all want a navy for defence only. It is to be hoped that the
United States will never seek war except for the defence of her
rights, her obligations, or her necessary interests. In that sense our
policy may always be defensive only, although it may compel us at
times to steps justified rather by expediency--the choice of the
lesser evil--than by incontrovertible right. But if we have interests
beyond sea which a navy may have to protect, it plainly follows that
the navy has more to do, even in war, than to defend the coast; and it
must be added as a received military axiom that war, however defensive
in moral character, must be waged aggressively if it is to hope for
success.
For national security, the correlative of a national principle firmly
held and distinctly avowed is, not only the will, but the power to
enforce it. The clear expression of national purpose, accompanied by
evident and adequate means to carry it into effect, is the surest
safeguard against war, provided always that the national contention is
maintained with a candid and courteous consideration of the rights and
susceptibilities of other states. On the other hand, no condition is
more hazardous than that of a dormant popular feeling, liable to be
roused into action by a moment of passion, such as that which swept
over the North when the flag was fired upon at Sumter, but behind
which lies no organized power for action. It is on the score of due
preparation for such an ultimate contingency that nations, and
especially free nations, are most often deficient. Yet, if wanting in
definiteness of foresight and persistency of action, owing to the
inevitable frequency of change in the governments that represent them,
democracies seem in compensation to be gifted with an instinct, the
result perhaps of the free and rapid interchange of thought by which
they are characterized, that intuitively and unconsciously assimilates
political truths, and prepares in part for political action before the
time for action has come. That the mass of United States citizens do
not realize understandingly that the nation has vital political
interests beyond the sea is probably true; still more likely is it
that they are not tracing any connection between them and the
reconstruction of the navy. Yet the interests exist, and the navy is
growing; and in the latter fact is the best surety that no breach of
peace will ensue from the maintenance of the former.
It is, not, then the indication of a formal political purpose, far
less of anything like a threat, that is, from my point of view, to be
recognized in the recent development of the navy. Nations, as a rule,
do not move with the foresight and the fixed plan which distinguish a
very few individuals of the human race. They do not practise on the
pistol-range before sending a challenge; if they did, wars would be
fewer, as is proved by the present long-continued armed peace in
Europe. Gradually and imperceptibly the popular feeling, which
underlies most lasting national movements, is aroused and swayed by
incidents, often trivial, but of the same general type, whose
recurrence gradually moulds public opinion and evokes national action,
until at last there issues that settled public conviction which alone,
in a free state, deserves the name of national policy. What the origin
of those particular events whose interaction establishes a strong
political current in a particular direction, it is perhaps
unprofitable to inquire. Some will see in the chain of cause and
effect only a chapter of accidents, presenting an interesting
philosophical study, and nothing more; others, equally persuaded that
nations do not effectively shape their mission in the world, will find
in them the ordering of a Divine ruler, who does not permit the
individual or the nation to escape its due share of the world's
burdens. But, however explained, it is a common experience of history
that in the gradual ripening of events there comes often suddenly and
unexpectedly the emergency, the call for action, to maintain the
nation's contention. That there is an increased disposition on the
part of civilized countries to deal with such cases by ordinary
diplomatic discussion and mutual concession can be gratefully
acknowledged; but that such dispositions are not always sufficient to
reach a peaceable solution is equally an indisputable teaching of the
recent past. Popular emotion, once fairly roused, sweeps away the
barriers of calm deliberation, and is deaf to the voice of reason.
That the consideration of relative power enters for much in the
diplomatic settlement of international difficulties is also certain,
just as that it goes for much in the ordering of individual careers.
"Can," as well as "will," plays a large share in the decisions of
life.
Like each man and woman, no state lives to itself alone, in a
political seclusion resembling the physical isolation which so long
was the ideal of China and Japan. All, whether they will or no, are
members of a community, larger or, smaller; and more and more those of
the European family to which we racially belong are touching each
other throughout the world, with consequent friction of varying
degree. That the greater rapidity of communication afforded by steam
has wrought, in the influence of sea power over the face of the globe,
an extension that is multiplying the points of contact and emphasizing
the importance of navies, is a fact, the intelligent appreciation of
which is daily more and more manifest in the periodical literature of
Europe, and is further shown by the growing stress laid upon that arm
of military strength by foreign governments; while the mutual
preparation of the armies on the European continent, and the fairly
settled territorial conditions, make each state yearly more wary of
initiating a contest, and thus entail a political quiescence there,
except in the internal affairs of each country. The field of external
action for the great European states is now the world, and it is
hardly doubtful that their struggles, unaccompanied as yet by actual
clash of arms, are even under that condition drawing nearer to
ourselves. Coincidently with our own extension to the Pacific Ocean,
which for so long had a good international claim to its name, that sea
has become more and more the scene of political development, of
commercial activities and rivalries, in which all the great powers,
ourselves included, have a share. Through these causes Central and
Caribbean America, now intrinsically unimportant, are brought in turn
into great prominence, as constituting the gateway between the
Atlantic and Pacific when the Isthmian canal shall have been made, and
as guarding the approaches to it. The appearance of Japan as a strong
ambitious state, resting on solid political and military foundations,
but which scarcely has reached yet a condition of equilibrium in
international standing, has fairly startled the world; and it is a
striking illustration of the somewhat sudden nearness and unforeseen
relations into which modern states are brought, that the Hawaiian
Islands, so interesting from the international point of view to the
countries of European civilization, are occupied largely by Japanese
and Chinese.
In all these questions we have a stake, reluctantly it may be, but
necessarily, for our evident interests are involved, in some instances
directly, in others by very probable implication. Under existing
conditions, the opinion that we can keep clear indefinitely of
embarrassing problems is hardly tenable; while war between two foreign
states, which in the uncertainties of the international situation
throughout the world may break out at any time, will increase greatly
the occasions of possible collision with the belligerent countries,
and the consequent perplexities of our statesmen seeking to avoid
entanglement and to maintain neutrality.
Although peace is not only the avowed but for the most part the actual
desire of European governments, they profess no such aversion to
distant political enterprises and colonial acquisitions as we by
tradition have learned to do. On the contrary, their committal to such
divergent enlargements of the national activities and influence is one
of the most pregnant facts of our time, the more so that their course
is marked in the case of each state by a persistence of the same
national traits that characterized the great era of colonization,
which followed the termination of the religious wars in Europe, and
led to the world-wide contests of the eighteenth century. In one
nation the action is mainly political,--that of a government pushed,
by long-standing tradition and by its passion for administration, to
extend the sphere of its operations so as to acquire a greater field
in which to organize and dominate, somewhat regardless of economical
advantage. In another the impulse comes from the restless, ubiquitous
energy of the individual citizens, singly or in companies, moved
primarily by the desire of gain, but carrying ever with them,
subordinate only to the commercial aim, the irresistible tendency of
the race to rule as well as to trade, and dragging the home government
to recognize and to assume the consequences of their enterprise. Yet
again there is the movement whose motive is throughout mainly private
and mercantile, in which the individual seeks wealth only, with little
or no political ambition, and where the government intervenes chiefly
that it may retain control of its subjects in regions where but for
such intervention they would become estranged from it. But, however
diverse the modes of operation, all have a common characteristic, in
that they bear the stamp of the national genius,--a proof that the
various impulses are not artificial, but natural, and that they
therefore will continue until an adjustment is reached.
What the process will be, and what the conclusion, it is impossible to
foresee; but that friction at times has been very great, and matters
dangerously near passing from the communications of cabinets to the
tempers of the peoples, is sufficiently known. If, on the one hand,
some look upon this as a lesson to us to keep clear of similar
adventures, on the other hand it gives a warning that not only do
causes of offence exist which may result at an unforeseen moment in a
rupture extending to many parts of the world, but also that there is a
spirit abroad which yet may challenge our claim to exclude its action
and interference in any quarter, unless it finds us prepared there in
adequate strength to forbid it, or to exercise our own. More and more
civilized man is needing and seeking ground to occupy, room over which
to expand and in which to live. Like all natural forces, the impulse
takes the direction of least resistance, but when in its course it
comes upon some region rich in possibilities, but unfruitful through
the incapacity or negligence of those who dwell therein, the
incompetent race or system will go down, as the inferior race ever has
fallen back and disappeared before the persistent impact of the
superior. The recent and familiar instance of Egypt is entirely in
point. The continuance of the existing system--if it can be called
such--had become impossible, not because of the native Egyptians, who
had endured the like for ages, but because there were involved therein
the interests of several European states, of which two principally
were concerned by present material interest and traditional rivalry.
Of these one, and that the one most directly affected, refused to take
part in the proposed interference, with the result that this was not
abandoned, but carried out solely by the other, which remains in
political and administrative control of the country. Whether the
original enterprise or the continued presence of Great Britain in
Egypt is entirely clear of technical wrongs, open to the criticism of
the pure moralist, is as little to the point as the morality of an
earthquake; the general action was justified by broad considerations
of moral expediency, being to the benefit of the world at large, and
of the people of Egypt in particular--however they might have voted in
the matter.
But what is chiefly instructive in this occurrence is the
inevitableness, which it shares in common with the great majority of
cases where civilized and highly organized peoples have trespassed
upon the technical rights of possession of the previous occupants of
the land--of which our own dealings with the American Indian afford
another example. The inalienable rights of the individual are entitled
to a respect which they unfortunately do not always get; but there is
no inalienable right in any community to control the use of a region
when it does so to the detriment of the world at large, of its
neighbors in particular, or even at times of its own subjects.
Witness, for example, the present angry resistance of the Arabs at
Jiddah to the remedying of a condition of things which threatens to
propagate a deadly disease far and wide, beyond the locality by which
it is engendered; or consider the horrible conditions under which the
Armenian subjects of Turkey have lived and are living. When such
conditions obtain, they can be prolonged only by the general
indifference or mutual jealousies of the other peoples concerned--as
in the instance of Turkey--or because there is sufficient force to
perpetuate the misrule, in which case the right is inalienable only
until its misuse brings ruin, or until a stronger force appears to
dispossess it. It is because so much of the world still remains in the
possession of the savage, or of states whose imperfect development,
political or economical, does not enable them to realize for the
general use nearly the result of which the territory is capable, while
at the same time the redundant energies of civilized states, both
government and peoples, are finding lack of openings and scantiness of
livelihood at home, that there now obtains a condition of aggressive
restlessness with which all have to reckon.
That the United States does not now share this tendency is entirely
evident. Neither her government nor her people are affected by it to
any great extent. But the force of circumstances has imposed upon her
the necessity, recognized with practical unanimity by her people, of
insuring to the weaker states of America, although of racial and
political antecedents different from her own, freedom to develop
politically along their own lines and according to their own
capacities, without interference in that respect from governments
foreign to these continents. The duty is self-assumed; and resting, as
it does, not upon political philanthropy, but simply upon our own
proximate interests as affected by such foreign interference, has
towards others rather the nature of a right than a duty. But, from
either point of view, the facility with which the claim has been
allowed heretofore by the great powers has been due partly to the lack
of pressing importance in the questions that have arisen, and partly
to the great latent strength of our nation, which was an argument more
than adequate to support contentions involving matters of no greater
immediate moment, for example, than that of the Honduras Bay Islands
or of the Mosquito Coast. Great Britain there yielded, it is true,
though reluctantly and slowly; and it is also true that, so far as
organized force is concerned, she could have destroyed our navy then
existing and otherwise have injured us greatly; but the substantial
importance of the question, though real, was remote in the future,
and, as it was, she made a political bargain which was more to her
advantage than ours. But while our claim thus far has received a tacit
acquiescence, it remains to be seen whether it will continue to
command the same if the states whose political freedom of action we
assert make no more decided advance towards political stability than
several of them have done yet, and if our own organized naval force
remains as slender, comparatively, as it once was, and even yet is. It
is probably safe to say that an undertaking like that of Great Britain
in Egypt, if attempted in this hemisphere by a non-American state,
would not be tolerated by us if able to prevent it; but it is
conceivable that the moral force of our contention might be weakened,
in the view of an opponent, by attendant circumstances, in which case
our physical power to support it should be open to no doubt.
That we shall seek to secure the peaceable solution of each difficulty
as it arises is attested by our whole history, and by the disposition
of our people; but to do so, whatever the steps taken in any
particular case, will bring us into new political relations and may
entail serious disputes with other states. In maintaining the justest
policy, the most reasonable influence, one of the political elements,
long dominant, and still one of the most essential, is military
strength--in the broad sense of the word "military," which includes
naval as well--not merely potential, which our own is, but organized
and developed, which our own as yet is not. We wisely quote
Washington's warning against entangling alliances, but too readily
forget his teaching about preparation for war. The progress of the
world from age to age, in its ever-changing manifestations, is a great
political drama, possessing a unity, doubtless, in its general
development, but in which, as act follows act, one situation alone can
engage, at one time, the attention of the actors. Of this drama war is
simply a violent and tumultuous political incident. A navy, therefore,
whose primary sphere of action is war, is, in the last analysis and
from the least misleading point of view, a political factor of the
utmost importance in international affairs, one more often deterrent
than irritant. It is in that light, according to the conditions of the
age and of the nation, that it asks and deserves the appreciation of
the state, and that it should be developed in proportion to the
reasonable possibilities of the political future.