Chapter V (2)

The varying fortunes, the ups and downs of the idea of arbitration at the Conference of The Hague, as far as my intelligence could follow them, produced in me two principal conclusions, which so far confirmed my previous points of view that I think I may now fairly claim for them that they have ripened into _opinions_, between which word, and the cruder, looser views received passively as _impressions_, I have been ever careful to mark a distinction. In the first place, compulsory arbitration stands at present no chance of general acceptance. There is but one way as yet in which arbitration can be compulsory; for the dream of some advanced thinkers, of an International Army, charged with imposing the decrees of an International Tribunal upon a recalcitrant state, may be dismissed as being outside of practical international politics, until at least the nations are ready for the intermediate step of moral compulsion, imposed by a self-assumed obligation--by a promise. Compulsory arbitration as yet means only the moral compulsion of a pledge, taken beforehand, and more or less comprehensive, to submit to arbitration questions which rest still in the unknown future; the very terms of which therefore cannot be foreseen. Although there is a certain active current of agitation in favor of such stipulations, there is no general disposition of governments to accede, except under very narrow and precise limitations, and in questions of less than secondary importance.

Secondly, there appears to be, on the other hand, a much greater disposition than formerly to entertain favorably the idea of arbitration, as a means to be in all cases considered, and where possible to be adopted, in order to solve peaceably difficulties which threaten peace. In short, the consciences of the nations are awake to the wickedness of unnecessary war, and are disposed, as a general rule, to seek first, and where admissible, the counterpoise of an impartial judge, where such can be found, to correct the bias of national self-will; but there is an absolute indisposition, an instinctive revolt, against signing away, beforehand, the national conscience, by a promise that any other arbiter than itself shall be accepted in questions of the future, the import of which cannot yet be discerned. Of this feeling the vague and somewhat clumsy phrase, "national honor and vital interests," has in the past been the expression; for its very indeterminateness reserved to conscience in every case the decision,--"May another judge for me here, or must I be bound by my own sense of right?"

Under these circumstances, and having reached so momentous a stage in progress as is indicated by the very calling together of a world conference for the better assuring of peace, may it not be well for us to pause a moment and take full account of the idea, Arbitration, on the right hand and on the left? Noble and beneficent in its true outlines, it too may share, may even now be sharing, the liability of the loftiest conceptions to degenerate into catchwords, or into cant. "Liberty, what crimes have been wrought in thy name!" and does not religion share the same reproach, and conscience also? Yet will we not away with any of the three.

The conviction of a nation is the conviction of the mass of the individuals thereof, and each individual has therefore a personal responsibility for the opinion he holds on a question of great national, or international, moment. Let us look, each of us,--and especially each of us who fears God,--into his own inner heart, and ask himself how far, in his personal life, he is prepared to accept arbitration. Is it not so that the reply must be, "In doubtful questions of moment, wherever I possibly can, knowing my necessary, inevitable proneness to one-sided views, I will seek an impartial adviser, that my bias may be corrected; but when that has been done, when I have sought what aid I can, if conscience still commands, it I must obey. From that duty, burdensome though it may be, no man can relieve me. Conscience, diligently consulted, is to the man the voice of God; between God and the man no other arbiter comes." And if this be so, a pledge beforehand is impossible. I cannot bind myself for a future of which I as yet know nothing, to abide by the decision of any other judge than my own conscience. Much humor--less wit--has been expended upon the Emperor of Germany's supposed carefulness to reject arbitration because an infringement of his divine rights; a phrase which may well be no more than a blunt expression of the sense that no third party can relieve a man from the obligations of the position to which he is called by God, and that for the duties of that position the man can confidently expect divine guidance and help. Be that as it may, the divine right of conscience will, among Americans, receive rare challenge.

It has been urged, however, that a higher organization of the nations, the provision of a supreme tribunal issuing and enforcing judgments, settling thereby quarrels and disputed rights, would produce for the nations of the earth a condition analogous to that of the individual citizen of the state, who no longer defends his own cause, nor is bound in conscience to maintain his own sense of right, when the law decides against him. The conception is not novel, not even modern; something much like it was put forth centuries ago by the Papacy concerning its own functions. It contains two fallacies. First, the submission of the individual citizen is to force, to the constitution of which he personally contributes little, save his individual and general assent. To an unjust law he submits under protest, doubtless often silent; but he submits, not because he consents to the wrong, whether to himself personally or to others, but because he cannot help it. This will perhaps be denied, with the assertion that willing, intelligent submission to law, even when unjust, is yielded by most for the general good. One has, however, only to consider the disposition of the average man to evade payment of taxes, to recognize how far force daily enters into the maintenance and execution of law. Nations, on the contrary, since no force exists, or without their volition can exist, to compel them to accept the institution of an authority superior to their own conscience, yield a willing acquiescence to wrong, when they so yield in obedience to an external authority imposed by themselves. The matter is not helped by the fact of a previous promise to accept such decisions. The wrong-doing of an individual, in consequence of an antecedent promise, does not relieve the conscience thus rashly fettered. The ancient warning still stands, "Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin." For the individual or the nation, arbitration is not possible where the decision may violate conscience; it therefore can be accepted only when it is known that interest merely, not duty, will be affected by the judgment, and such knowledge cannot exist antecedent to the difficulty arising.

There is a further--a second--fallacy in the supposed analogy between the submission of individuals to law, and the advocated submission of states to a central tribunal. The law of the state, overwhelming as is its power relatively to that of the individual citizen, can neither bind nor loose in matters pertaining to the conscience. Still less can any tribunal, however solemnly constituted, liberate a state from its obligation to do right; still less, I say, because the state retains, what the individual has in great part lost, the power to maintain what it believes to be right. Many considerations may make it more right--I do not say _more expedient_--for a man or for a nation, to submit to, or to acquiesce in, wrong than to resist; but in such cases it is conscience still that decides where the balance of justice turns distinctly to the side of wrong. It is, I presume, universally admitted, that occasions may arise where conscience not only justifies, but compels, resistance to law; whether it be the Christian citizen refusing to sacrifice, or the free citizen to subject himself to unconstitutional taxation, or to become the instrument of returning the slave to his master. So also for the Christian state. Existing wrong may have to be allowed, lest a greater wrong be done. Conscience only can decide; and for that very reason conscience must be kept free, that it may decide according to its sense of right, when the case is presented.

There is, therefore, the very serious consideration attendant upon what is loosely styled "compulsory" arbitration,--arbitration stipulated, that is, in advance of a question originating, or of its conditions being appreciated,--that a state may thereby do that which a citizen as towards the state does not do; namely, may voluntarily assume a moral obligation to do, or to allow, wrong. And it must be remembered, also, that many of the difficulties which arise among states involve considerations distinctly beyond and higher than law as international law now exists; whereas the advocated Permanent Tribunal, to which the ultra-organizers look, to take cognizance of all cases, must perforce be governed by law as it exists. It is not, in fact, to be supposed that nations will submit themselves to a tribunal, the general principles of which have not been crystallized into a code of some sort.

A concrete instance, however, is always more comprehensible and instructive than a general discussion. Let us therefore take the incidents and conditions which preceded our recent war with Spain. The facts, as seen by us, may, I apprehend, be fairly stated as follows: In the island of Cuba, a powerful military force,--government it scarcely could be called,--foreign to the island, was holding a small portion of it in enforced subjection, and was endeavoring, unsuccessfully, to reduce the remainder. In pursuance of this attempt, measures were adopted that inflicted immense misery and death upon great numbers of the population. Such suffering is indeed attendant upon war; but it may be stated as a fundamental principle of civilized warfare that useless suffering is condemned, and it had become apparent to military eyes that Spain could not subdue the island, nor restore orderly conditions. The suffering was terrible, and was unavailing.

Under such circumstances, does any moral obligation lie upon a powerful neighboring state? Or, more exactly, if there is borne in upon the moral consciousness of a mighty people that such an afflicted community as that of Cuba at their doors is like Lazarus at the gate of the rich man, and that the duty of stopping the evil rests upon them, what is to be done with such a case of conscience? Could the decision of another, whether nation or court, excuse our nation from the ultimate responsibility of its own decision? But, granting that it might have proved expedient to call in other judges, when we had full knowledge of the circumstances, what would have been our dilemma if, conscience commanding one course, we had found ourselves antecedently bound to abide by the conclusions of another arbiter? For let us not deceive ourselves. Absolutely justifiable, nay, imperative, as most of us believe our action to have been, when tried at the bar of conscience, no arbitral court, acceptable to the two nations, would have decided as our own conscience did. A European diplomatist of distinguished reputation, of a small nation likeliest to be unbiassed, so said to me personally, and it is known that more than one of our own ablest international lawyers held that we were acting in defiance of international law as it now exists; just as the men who resisted the Fugitive Slave Law acted in defiance of the statute law of the land. Decision must have gone against us, so these men think, on the legal merits of the case. Of the moral question the arbiter could take no account; it is not there, indeed, that moral questions must find their solution, but in the court of conscience. Referred to arbitration, doubtless the Spanish flag would still fly over Cuba.

There is unquestionably a higher law than Law, concerning obedience to which no other than the man himself, or the state, can give account to Him that shall judge. The freedom of the conscience may be fettered or signed away by him who owes to it allegiance, yet its supremacy, though thus disavowed, cannot be overthrown. The Conference at The Hague has facilitated future recourse to arbitration, by providing means through which, a case arising, a court is more easily constituted, and rules governing its procedure are ready to hand; but it has refrained from any engagements binding states to have recourse to the tribunal thus created. The responsibility of the state to its own conscience remains unimpeached and independent. The progress thus made and thus limited is to a halting place, at which, whether well chosen or not, the nations must perforce stop for a time; and it will be wise to employ that time in considering the bearings, alike of that which has been done, and of that which has been left undone.

Our own country has a special need thus carefully to consider the possible consequences of arbitration, understood in the sense of an antecedent pledge to resort to it; unless under limitations very carefully hedged. There is an undoubted popular tendency in direction of such arbitration, which would be "compulsory" in the highest moral sense,--the compulsion of a promise. The world at large, and we especially, stand at the opening of a new era, concerning whose problems little can be foreseen. Among the peoples, there is manifested intense interest in the maturing of our national convictions, as being, through Asia, new-comers into active international life, concerning whose course it is impossible to predict; and in many quarters, probably in all except Great Britain, the attitude toward us is watchful rather than sympathetic. The experience of Crete and of Armenia does not suggest beneficent results from the arbitration of many counsellors; especially if contrasted with the more favorable issue when Russia, in 1877, acting on her own single initiative, forced by the conscience of her people, herself alone struck the fetters from Bulgaria; or when we ourselves last year, rejecting intermediation, loosed the bonds from Cuba, and lifted the yoke from the neck of the oppressed.

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

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

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

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

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

NOTE.--This paper was the means of bringing into the author's
hands a letter by the late General Sherman, which forcibly
illustrates how easily, in quiet moments, men forget what
they have owed, and still owe, to the sword. From the
coincidence of its thought with that of the article itself,
permission to print it here has been asked and received.

NEW YORK, February 5th, 1890.

DEAR GENERAL MEIGS,--I attended the Centennial Ceremonies in
honor of the Supreme Court yesterday, four full hours in the
morning at the Metropolitan Opera House, and about the same
measure of time at the Grand Banquet of 850 lawyers in the
evening at the Lenox Lyceum.

The whole was superb in all its proportions, but it was no
place for a soldier. I was bidden to the feast solely and
exclusively because in 1858 for a few short months I was an
attorney at Leavenworth, Kansas.

The Bar Association of the United States has manifestly cast
aside the Sword of Liberty. Justice and Law have ignored the
significance of the Great Seal of the United States, with its
emblematic olive branch and thirteen arrows, "all proper,"
and now claim that, without force, Law and moral suasion have
carried us through one hundred years of history. Of course,
in your study you will read at leisure these speeches, and if
in them you discover any sense of obligation to the Soldier
element, you will be luckier than I, a listener.

From 1861 to 1865 the Supreme Court was absolutely paralyzed;
their decrees and writs were treated with contempt south of
the Potomac and Ohio; they could not summon a witness or send
a Deputy Marshal. War, and the armed Power of the Nation,
alone removed the barrier and restored to the U.S. courts
their lawful jurisdiction. Yet, from these honied words of
flattery, a stranger would have inferred that at last the
lawyers of America had discovered the sovereign panacea of a
Government without force, either visible or in reserve.

I was in hopes the Civil War had dispelled this dangerous
illusion, but it seems not.

You and I can fold our hands and truly say we have done a
man's share, and leave the consequences to younger men who
must buffet with the next storms; but a Government which
ignores the great truths illuminated in heraldic language
over its very Capitol is not yet at the end of its woes.

With profound respect,
W.T. SHERMAN.

THE RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES TO THEIR NEW DEPENDENCIES

THE RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES TO THEIR NEW DEPENDENCIES

In modern times there have been two principal colonizing nations, which not merely have occupied and administered a great transmarine domain, but have impressed upon it their own identity--the totality of their political and racial characteristics--to a degree that is likely to affect permanently the history of the world at large.

These two nations, it is needless to say, are Great Britain and Spain. Russia, their one competitor, differs from them in that her sustained advance over alien regions is as wholly by land as theirs has been by sea. France and Holland have occupied and administered, and continue to occupy and administer, large extents of territory; but it is scarcely necessary to argue that in neither case has the race possessed the land, nor have the national characteristics been transmitted to the dwellers therein as a whole. They have realized, rather, the idea recently formulated by Mr. Benjamin Kidd for the development of tropical regions,--administration from without.

The unexpected appearance of the United States as in legal control of transmarine territory, which as yet they have not had opportunity either to occupy or to administer, coincides in time with the final downfall of Spain's colonial empire, and with a stage in the upward progress of that of Great Britain, so marked, in the contrast it presents to the ruin of Spain, as to compel attention and comparison, with an ultimate purpose to draw therefrom instruction for the United States in the new career forced upon them. The larger colonies of Great Britain are not indeed reaching their majority, for that they did long ago; but the idea formulated in the phrase "imperial federation" shows that they, and the mother country herself, have passed through and left behind the epoch when the accepted thought in both was that they should in the end separate, as sons leave the father's roof, to set up, each for himself. To that transition phase has succeeded the ideal of partnership, more complex indeed and difficult of attainment, but trebly strong if realized. The terms of partnership, the share of each member in the burdens and in the profits, present difficulties which will delay, and may prevent, the consummation; time alone can show. The noticeable factor in this change of mind, however, is the affectionate desire manifested by both parent and children to ensure the desired end. Between nations long alien we have high warrant for saying that interest alone determines action; but between communities of the same blood, and when the ties of dependence on the one part are still recent, sentiments--love and mutual pride--are powerful, provided there be good cause for them. And good cause there is. Since she lost what is now the United States, Great Britain has become benevolent and beneficent to her colonies.

It is not in colonies only, however, that Great Britain has been beneficent to weaker communities; nor are benevolence and beneficence the only qualities she has shown. She has been strong also,--strong in her own interior life, whence all true strength issues; strong in the quality of the men she has sent forth to colonize and to administer; strong to protect by the arm of her power, by land, and, above all, by sea. The advantage of the latter safeguard is common to all her dependencies; but it is among subject and alien races, and not in colonies properly so called, that her terrestrial energy chiefly manifests itself, to control, to protect, and to elevate. Of these functions, admirably discharged in the main, India and Egypt are the conspicuous illustrations. In them she administers from without, and cannot be said to colonize, for the land was already full.

Conspicuous result constitutes example: for imitation, if honorable; for warning, if shameful. Experience is the great teacher, and is at its best when personal; but in the opening of a career such experience is wanting to the individual, and must be sought in the record of other lives, or of other nations. The United States are just about to enter on a task of government--of administration--over regions which, in inhabitants, in climate, and in political tradition, differ essentially from themselves. What are the conditions of success?

We have the two great examples. Great Britain has been, in the main, and increasingly, beneficent and strong. Spain, from the very first, as the records show, was inhumanly oppressive to the inferior races; and, after her own descendants in the colonies became aliens in habit to the home country, she to them also became tyrannically exacting. But, still more, Spain became weaker and weaker as the years passed, the tyranny of her extortions being partially due to exigencies of her political weakness and to her economical declension. Let us, however, not fail to observe that the beneficence, as well as the strength, of Great Britain has been a matter of growth. She was not always what she now is to the alien subject. There is, therefore, no reason to despair, as some do, that the United States, who share her traditions, can attain her success. The task is novel to us; we may make blunders; but, guided by her experience, we should reach the goal more quickly.

And it is to our interest to do so. Enlightened self-interest demands of us to recognize not merely, and in general, the imminence of the great question of the farther East, which is rising so rapidly before us, but also, specifically, the importance to us of a strong and beneficent occupation of adjacent territory. In the domain of color, black and white are contradictory; but it is not so with self-interest and beneficence in the realm of ideas. This paradox is now too generally accepted for insistence, although in the practical life of states the proper order of the two is too often inverted. But, where the relations are those of trustee to ward, as are those of any state which rules over a weaker community not admitted to the full privileges of home citizenship, the first test to which measures must be brought is the good of the ward. It is the first interest of the guardian, for it concerns his honor. Whatever the part of the United States in the growing conflict of European interests around China and the East, we deal there with equals, and may battle like men; but our new possessions, with their yet minor races, are the objects only of solicitude.

Ideas underlie action. If the paramount idea of beneficence becomes a national conviction, we may stumble and err, we may at times sin, or be betrayed by unworthy representatives; but we shall advance unfailingly. I have been asked to contribute to the discussion of this matter something from my own usual point of view; which is, of course, the bearing of sea power upon the security and the progress of nations. Well, one great element of sea power, which, it will be remembered, is commercial before it is military, is that there be territorial bases of action in the regions important to its commerce. That is self-interest. But the history of Spain's decline, and the history of Great Britain's advance,--in the latter of which the stern lesson given by the revolt of the United States is certainly a conspicuous factor, as also, perhaps, the other revolt known as the Indian Mutiny, in 1857,--alike teach us that territories beyond the sea can be securely held only when the advantage and interests of the inhabitants are the primary object of the administration. The inhabitants may not return love for their benefits,--comprehension or gratitude may fail them; but the sense of duty achieved, and the security of the tenure, are the reward of the ruler.

I have understood also that, through the pages of "The Engineering Magazine," I should speak to the men who stand at the head of the great mechanical industries of the country,--the great inventors and the leaders in home development,--and that they would be willing to hear me. But what can I say to them that they do not know? Their own businesses are beyond my scope and comprehension. The opportunities offered by the new acquisitions of the United States to the pursuits with which they are identified they can understand better than I. Neither is it necessary to say that adequate--nay, great--naval development is a condition of success, although such an assertion is more within my competence, as a student of navies and of history. That form of national strength which is called sea power becomes now doubly incumbent. It is needed not merely for national self-assertion, but for beneficence; to ensure to the new subjects of the nation peace and industry, uninterrupted by wars, the great protection against which is preparation--to use that one counsel of Washington's which the anti-imperialist considers to be out of date.

I have, therefore, but one thing which I have not already often said to offer to such men, who affect these great issues through their own aptitudes and through their far-reaching influence upon public opinion, which they touch through many channels. Sea power, as a national interest, commercial and military, rests not upon fleets only, but also upon local territorial bases in distant commercial regions. It rests upon them most securely when they are extensive, and when they have a numerous population bound to the sovereign country by those ties of interest which rest upon the beneficence of the ruler; of which beneficence power to protect is not the least factor. Mere just dealing and protection, however, do not exhaust the demands of beneficence towards alien subjects, still in race-childhood. The firm but judicious remedying of evils, the opportunities for fuller and happier lives, which local industries and local development afford, these also are a part of the duty of the sovereign power. Above all, there must be constant recognition that self-interest and beneficence alike demand that the local welfare be first taken into account. It is possible, of course, that it may at times have to yield to the necessities of the whole body; but it should be first considered.

The task is great; who is sufficient for it? The writer believes firmly in the ultimate power of ideas. Napoleon is reported to have said: "Imagination rules the world." If this be generally so, how much more the true imaginations which are worthy to be called ideas! There is a nobility in man which welcomes the appeal to beneficence. May it find its way quickly now to the heads and hearts of the American people, before less worthy ambitions fill them; and, above all, to the kings of men, in thought and in action, under whose leadership our land makes its giant strides. There is in this no Quixotism. Materially, the interest of the nation is one with its beneficence; but if the ideas get inverted, and the nation sees in its new responsibilities, first of all, markets and profits, with incidental resultant benefit to the natives, it will go wrong. Through such mistakes Great Britain passed. She lost the United States; she suffered bitter anguish in India; but India and Egypt testify to-day to the nobility of her repentance. Spain repented not. The examples are before us. Which shall we follow?

And is there not a stimulus to our imagination, and to high ambition, to read, as we easily may, how the oppressed have been freed, and the degraded lifted, in India and in Egypt, not only by political sagacity and courage, but by administrative capacity directing the great engineering enterprises, which change the face of a land and increase a hundredfold the opportunities for life and happiness? The profession of the writer, and the subject consequently of most of his writing, stands for organized force, which, if duly developed, is the concrete expression of the nation's strength. But while he has never concealed his opinion that the endurance of civilization, during a future far beyond our present foresight, depends ultimately upon due organization of force, he has ever held, and striven to say, that such force is but the means to an end, which end is durable peace and progress, and therefore beneficence. The triumphs and the sufferings of the past months have drawn men's eyes to the necessity for increase of force, not merely to sustain over-sea dominion, but also to ensure timely use, in action, of the latent military and naval strength which the nation possesses. The speedy and inevitable submission of Spain has demonstrated beyond contradiction the primacy of navies in determining the issue of transmarine wars; for after Cavité and Santiago had crippled hopelessly the enemy's navy, the end could not be averted, though it might have been postponed. On the other hand, the numerical inadequacy of the troops sent to Santiago, and their apparently inadequate equipment, have shown the necessity for greater and more skilfully organized land forces. The deficiency of the United States in this respect would have permitted a prolonged resistance by the enemy's army in Cuba,--a course which, though sure ultimately to fail, appealed strongly to military punctilio.

These lessons are so obvious that it is not supposable that the national intelligence, which has determined the American demand for the Philippines, can overlook them; certainly not readers of the character of those to whom this paper is primarily addressed. But when all this has been admitted and provided for, it still remains that force is but the minister, under whose guardianship industry does its work and enjoys peaceably the fruits of its labor. To the mechanical industries of the country, in their multifold forms, our new responsibilities propound the questions, not merely of naval and military protection, but of material development, which, first beneficent to the inhabitants and to the land, gives also, and thereby, those firm foundations of a numerous and contented population, and of ample local resources, upon which alone military power can securely rest.

DISTINGUISHING QUALITIES OF SHIPS OF WAR

DISTINGUISHING QUALITIES OF SHIPS OF WAR

From the descriptions of warships usually published, it would naturally be inferred that the determination of their various qualities concern primarily the naval architect and the marine engineer. This is an error. Warships exist for war. Their powers, being for the operations of war, are military necessities, the appreciation of which, and the consequent qualities demanded, are military questions. Only when these have been decided, upon military reasons, begins the office of the technologist; namely, to produce the qualities prescribed by the sea officer. An eminent British naval architect used to say, "I hold that it is the part of the naval officers to tell us just what qualities--speed, gun-power, armor, coal endurance, etc.--are required in a ship to be built, and then leave it to us to produce the ship." These words distinguish accurately and summarily the functions of the military and the technical experts in the development of navies. It is from the military standpoint, solely, that this article is written.

The military function of a navy is to control the sea, so far as the sea contributes to the maintenance of the war. The sea is the theatre of naval war; it is the field in which the naval campaign is waged; and, like other fields of military operations, it does not resemble a blank sheet of paper, every point of which is equally important with every other point. Like the land, the sea, as a military field, has its important centres, and it is not controlled by spreading your force, whatever its composition, evenly over an entire field of operations, like butter over bread, but by occupying the centres with aggregated forces--fleets or armies--ready to act in masses, in various directions from the centres. This commonplace of warfare is its first principle. It is called concentration, because the forces are not spread out, but drawn together at the centres which for the moment are most important.

Concentrated forces, therefore, are those upon which warfare depends for efficient control, and for efficient energy in the operations of war. They have two chief essential characteristics: force, which is gained by concentration of numbers; and mobility, which is the ability to carry the force rapidly, as well as effectively, from the centre to any point of the outlying field where action, offensive or defensive, becomes necessary. It is essential to keep in mind both these factors, and to study them in their true mutual relations of priority, in order and in importance,--force first, mobility second; for the force does not exist for the mobility, but the mobility for the force, which it subserves. Force without mobility is useful; even though limited, as in coast fortifications; mobility without force is almost useless for the greater purposes of war. Consequently, when it is found, as is frequently the case, that one must yield somewhat, in order to the full development of the other, it is extreme mobility, extreme speed, which must give way to greater force.

This caution may seem superfluous, but it is not so; for in the popular fancy, and in the appreciation of the technical expert, and to some extent also in the official mind as well,--owing to that peculiar fad of the day which lays all stress on machinery,--mobility, speed, is considered the most important characteristic in every kind of ship of war. Let the reader ask himself what is the most pronounced impression left upon his mind by newspaper accounts of a new ship. Is it not that she is expected to make so many knots? Compared with that, what does the average man know of the fighting she can do, when she has reached the end of that preposterously misleading performance called her trial trip? The error is of the nature of a half-truth, the most dangerous of errors; for it is true that, as compared with land forces, the great characteristic of navies is mobility; but it is not true that, between different classes of naval vessels, the swiftest are the most efficient for control of the sea. Force is for that the determining element.

Keeping these relations of force and mobility constantly in mind, there is a further consideration, easily evident, but which needs to be distinctly stated and remembered. When a ship is once built, she cannot be divided. If you have on land concentrated ten thousand men, you can detach any fraction of them you wish for a particular purpose; you can send one man or ten, or a company, or a regiment. You can, in short, make of them any fresh combination you choose. With ships, the least you can send is one ship, and the smallest you have may be more than you wish to spare. From this (as well as for other reasons) arises a necessity for ships of different classes and sizes, which must be determined beforehand. The determination must be reached not merely by _a priori_ reasoning, as though the problem were wholly new; but regard must be had to the experience of the past,--to the teaching of history. History is experience, and as such underlies progress, just as the cognate idea, experiment, underlies scientific advance.

Both history and reasoning, of the character already outlined in these papers, concur in telling us that control of the sea is exercised by vessels individually very large for their day, concentrated into bodies called fleets, stationed at such central points as the emergency demands. Our predecessors of the past two centuries called these vessels "ships of the line of battle," from which probably derives our briefer modern name "battleship," which is appropriate only if the word "battle" be confined to fleet actions.

Among the naval entities, fleets are at once the most powerful and the least mobile; yet they are the only really determining elements in naval war. They are the most powerful, because in them are concentrated many ships, each of which is extremely strong for fighting. They are the least mobile, because many ships, which must keep together, can proceed only at the rate of the slowest among them. It is natural to ask why not build them all equally fast? The reply is, it is possible to do so within very narrow limits, but it is not possible to keep them so. Every deterioration, accident, or adverse incident, which affects one involves all, as regards speed, though not as regards fighting force. In our recent war, when an extensive operation was contemplated, the speed of one battleship reduced the calculated speed of the fleet by one knot,--one sea mile per hour. But, it may be urged, will not your slowest speed be much increased, if every vessel be originally faster? Doubtless; but speed means tonnage,--part of the ship's weight devoted to engines; and weight, if given to speed, is taken from other qualities; and if, to increase speed, you reduce fighting power, you increase something you cannot certainly hold, at the expense of something at once much more important and more constant--less liable to impairment. In the operation just cited the loss of speed was comparatively of little account; but the question of fighting force upon arrival was serious.

An escape from this dilemma is sought by the advocates of very high speed for battleships by increasing the size of the individual ship. If this increase of size is accompanied by increase of speed, but not proportionately of fighting power, the measure, in the opinion of the writer, stands self-condemned. But, granting that force gains equally with speed, there is a further objection already mentioned. The exigencies of war demand at times division, as well as concentration; and, in fact, concentration, properly understood, does not mean keeping ships necessarily within sight of one another, but so disposed that they can unite readily at will,--a consideration which space forbids me more than to state. Now, a big ship cannot be divided into two; or, more pertinently, eight ships cannot be made into ten when you want two bodies of five each. The necessity, or supposed necessity, of maintaining the Flying Squadron at Hampton Roads during the late hostilities exactly illustrates this idea. Under all the conditions, this disposition was not wholly false to concentration, rightly considered; but had the ships been fewer and bigger, it could not have been made.

The net result, therefore, of the argument, supported, as the writer believes, by the testimony of history, is: (1) that a navy which wishes to affect decisively the issues of a maritime war must be composed of heavy ships--"battleships"--possessing a maximum of fighting power, and so similar in type as to facilitate that uniformity of movement and of evolution upon which concentration, once effected, must depend for its maintenance, whether during a passage or in actual engagement; (2) that in such ships, regarded as fighting factors, which is their primary function, size is limited, as to the minimum, by the advisability of concentrating as much fighting power as possible under the hand of a single captain; but, on the other hand, size is also limited, as to its maximum, by the need of retaining ability to subdivide the whole fleet, according to particular exigencies; (3) as regards that particular form of mobility called speed, the writer regards it as distinctly secondary for the battleship; that, to say the least, the present proportions of weight assigned to fighting force should not be sacrificed to obtain increase of speed. Neither should the size of the individual ships be increased merely to obtain rates of speed higher than that already shown by some of our present battleships.

Concerning that particular function of mobility which is called coal endurance,--that is, the ability to steam a certain distance without stopping to recoal,--the convenience to military operations of such a quality is evident; but it is obvious that it cannot, with the fuels now available, be possessed beyond very narrow limits. A battleship that can steam the greatest distance that separates two fortified coaling stations of her nation, with a reasonable margin above that to meet emergencies, will evidently be able to remain for a long while with the fleet, when this is concentrated to remain under reduced steam at a particular point. The recoaling of ships is a difficulty which must be met by improving the methods of that operation, not by sacrificing the military considerations which should control the size and other qualities of the vessel.

It is the belief of the writer that ten thousand tons represent very nearly the minimum, and twelve thousand the maximum, of size for the battleship. Our present battleships fall within those limits, and, although less uniform in their qualities than might be desired, they give perfectly satisfactory indications that the requisite qualities can all be had without increase of size. When more is wanted--and we should always be striving for perfection--it should be sought in the improvement of processes, and not in the adding of ton to ton, like a man running up a bill. It is the difference between economy and extravagance. Into battleships such as these should go the greater proportion of the tonnage a nation gives to its navy. Ships so designed may reach the ground of action later than those which have more speed; but when they arrive, the enemy, if of weaker fighting power, must go, and what then has been the good of their speed? War is won by holding on, or driving off; not by successful running away.

An important consideration in determining the necessary composition of a navy is the subdivision of fighting power into offensive and defensive. The latter is represented chiefly by armor, the former by guns; although other factors contribute to both. The relative importance of the two depends upon no mere opinion of the writer, but upon a consensus of authority practically unanimous, and which, therefore, demands no argument, but simple statement. Offensive action--not defensive--determines the issues of war. "The best defence against the enemy's fire is a rapid fire from our own guns," was a pithy phrase of our Admiral Farragut; and in no mere punning sense it may be added that it is for this reason that the rapid-fire gun of the present day made such big strides in professional favor, the instant it was brought to the test of battle. The rapid-fire gun is smaller than the great cannon mounted in the turrets; but, while the latter have their proper usefulness, the immensely larger number of projectiles fired in a given time, and valid against the target presented to them, makes the rapid-fire battery a much stronger weapon, offensively, than the slow-acting giants. Here is the great defect of the monitor, properly so-called; that is, the low-freeboard monitor. Defensively, the monitor is very strong; offensively, judged by present-day standards, it is weak, possessing the heavy cannon, but deficient in rapid fire. Consequently, its usefulness is limited chiefly to work against fortifications,--a target exceptional in resistance, and rarely a proper object for naval attack. It is the opinion of the writer that no more monitors should be built, except as accessory to the defence of those harbors where submarine mines cannot be depended upon,--as at San Francisco and Puget Sound. It should be added that the monitor at sea rolls twice as rapidly as the battleship, which injuriously affects accuracy of aim; that is, offensive power.

The general principle of the decisive superiority of offensive power over defensive is applicable throughout,--to the operations of a war, to the design of a battleship, to the scheme of building a whole navy. It is to the erroneous belief in mere defence that we owe much of the faith in the monitor, and some of the insistence upon armor; while the cry that went up for local naval defence along our coast, when war threatened in the spring of 1898, showed an ignorance of the first principles of warfare, which, if not resisted, would have left us impotent even before Spain.