Part 3 (2/2)

War is simply a political movement, though violent and exceptional in its character. However sudden the occasion from which it arises, it results from antecedent conditions, the general tendency of which should be manifest long before to the statesmen of a nation, and to at least the reflective portion of the people. In such antic.i.p.ation, such forethought, as in the affairs of common life, lies the best hope of the best solution,--peace by ordinary diplomatic action; peace by timely agreement, while men's heads are cool, and the crisis of fever has not been reached by the inflammatory utterances of an unscrupulous press, to which agitated public apprehension means increase of circulation. But while the maintenance of peace by sagacious prevision is the laurel of the statesman, which, in failing to achieve except by force, he takes from his own brow and gives to the warrior, it is none the less a necessary part of his official competence to recognize that in public disputes, as in private, there is not uncommonly on both sides an element of right, real or really believed, which prevents either party from yielding, and that it is better for men to fight than, for the sake of peace, to refuse to support their convictions of justice. How deplorable the war between the North and South! but more deplorable by far had it been that either had flinched from the maintenance of what it believed to be fundamental right. On questions of merely material interest men may yield; on matters of principle they may be honestly in the wrong; but a conviction of right, even though mistaken, if yielded without contention, entails a deterioration of character, except in the presence of force demonstrably irresistible--and sometimes even then. Death before dishonor is a phrase which at times has been abused infamously, but it none the less contains a vital truth.

To provide a force adequate to maintain the nation's cause, and to insure its readiness for immediate action in case of necessity, are the responsibility of the government of a state, in its legislative and executive functions. Such a force is a necessary outcome of the political conditions which affect, or, as can be foreseen, probably may affect, the international relations of the country. Its existence at all and its size are, or should be, the reflection of the national consciousness that in this, that, or the other direction lie clear national interests--for which each generation is responsible to futurity--or national duties, equally clear from the mere fact that the matter lies at the door, like Lazarus at the rich man's gate. The question of when or how action shall be taken which may result in hostilities, is indeed a momentous one, having regard to the dire evils of war; but it is the question of a moment, of the last moment to which can be postponed a final determination of such tremendous consequence. To this determination preparation for war has only this relation: that it should be adequate to the utmost demand that then can be made upon it, and, if possible, so imposing that it will prevent war ensuing, upon the firm presentation of demands which the nation believes to be just. Such a conception, so stated, implies no more than defence,--defence of the nation's rights or of the nation's duties, although such defence may take the shape of aggressive action, the only safe course in war.

Logically, therefore, a nation which proposes to provide itself with a naval or military organization adequate to its needs, must begin by considering, not what is the largest army or navy in the world, with the view of rivalling it, but what there is in the political status of the world, including not only the material interests but the temper of nations, which involves a reasonable, even though remote, prospect of difficulties which may prove insoluble except by war. The matter, primarily, is political in character. It is not until this political determination has been reached that the data for even stating the military problem are in hand; for here, as always, the military arm waits upon and is subservient to the political interests and civil power of the state.

It is not the most probable of dangers, but the most formidable, that must be selected as measuring the degree of military precaution to be embodied in the military preparations thenceforth to be maintained.

The lesser is contained in the greater; if equal to the most that can be apprehended reasonably, the country can view with quiet eye the existence of more imminent, but less dangerous complications. Nor should it be denied that in estimating danger there should be a certain sobriety of imagination, equally removed from undue confidence and from exaggerated fears. Napoleon's caution to his marshals not to make a picture to themselves--not to give too loose rein to fancy as to what the enemy might do, regardless of the limitations to which military movements are subject--applies to antecedent calculations, like those which we are considering now, as really as to the operations of the campaign. When British writers, realizing the absolute dependence of their own country upon the sea, insist that the British navy must exceed the two most formidable of its possible opponents, they advance an argument which is worthy at least of serious debate; but when the two is raised to three, they a.s.sume conditions which are barely possible, but lie too far without the limits of probability to affect practical action.

In like manner, the United States, in estimating her need of military preparation of whatever kind, is justified in considering, not merely the utmost force which might be brought against her by a possible enemy, under the political circ.u.mstances most favorable to the latter, but the limitations imposed upon an opponent's action by well-known conditions of a permanent nature. Our only rivals in potential military strength are the great powers of Europe. These, however, while they have interests in the western hemisphere,--to which a certain solidarity is imparted by their instinctive and avowed opposition to a policy to which the United States, by an inward compulsion apparently irresistible, becomes more and more committed,--have elsewhere yet wider and more onerous demands upon their attention. Since 1884 Great Britain, France, and Germany have each acquired colonial possessions, varying in extent from one million to two and a half million square miles,--chiefly in Africa. This means, as is generally understood, not merely the acquisition of so much new territory, but the perpetuation of national rivalries and suspicions, maintaining in full vigor, in this age, the traditions of past animosities. It means uncertainties about boundaries--that most fruitful source of disputes when running through unexplored wildernesses--jealousy of influence over native occupants of the soil, fear of encroachment, unperceived till too late, and so a constant, if silent, strife to insure national preponderance in these newly opened regions. The colonial expansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is being resumed under our eyes, bringing with it the same train of ambitions and feelings that were exhibited then, though these are qualified by the more orderly methods of modern days and by a well-defined mutual apprehension,--the result of a universal preparedness for war, the distinctive feature of our own time which most guarantees peace.

All this reacts evidently upon Europe, the common mother-country of these various foreign enterprises, in whose seas and lands must be fought out any struggle springing from these remote causes, and upon whose inhabitants chiefly must fall both the expense and the bloodshed thence arising. To these distant burdens of disquietude--in the a.s.suming of which, though to an extent self-imposed, the present writer recognizes the prevision of civilization, instinctive rather than conscious, against the perils of the future--is to be added the proximate and unavoidable anxiety dependent upon the conditions of Turkey and its provinces, the logical outcome of centuries of Turkish misrule. Deplorable as have been, and to some extent still are, political conditions on the American continents, the New World, in the matter of political distribution of territory and fixity of tenure, is permanence itself, as compared with the stormy prospect confronting the Old in its questions which will not down.

In these controversies, which range themselves under the broad heads of colonial expansion and the Eastern question, all the larger powers of Europe, the powers that maintain considerable armies or navies, or both, are directly and deeply interested--except Spain. The latter manifests no solicitude concerning the settlement of affairs in the east of Europe, nor is she engaged in increasing her still considerable colonial dominion. This preoccupation of the great powers, being not fact.i.tious, but necessary,--a thing that cannot be dismissed by an effort of the national will, because its existence depends upon the nature of things,--is a legitimate element in the military calculations of the United States. It cannot enter into her diplomatic considerations, for it is her pride not to seek, from the embarra.s.sments of other states, advantages or concessions which she cannot base upon the substantial justice of her demands. But, while this is true, the United States has had in the past abundant experience of disputes, in which, though she believed herself right, even to the point of having a just _casus belli_, the other party has not seemed to share the same conviction. These difficulties, chiefly, though not solely, territorial in character, have been the natural bequest of the colonial condition through which this hemisphere pa.s.sed on its way to its present political status. Her own view of right, even when conceded in the end, has not approved itself at first to the other party to the dispute. Fortunately these differences have been mainly with Great Britain, the great and beneficent colonizer, a state between which and ourselves a sympathy, deeper than both parties have been ready always to admit, has continued to exist, because founded upon common fundamental ideas of law and justice. Of this the happy termination of the Venezuelan question is the most recent but not the only instance.

It is sometimes said that Great Britain is the most unpopular state in Europe. If this be so,--and many of her own people seem to accept the fact of her political isolation, though with more or less of regret,--is there nothing significant to us in that our att.i.tude towards her in the Venezuelan matter has not commanded the sympathy of Europe, but rather the reverse? Our claim to enter, as of right, into a dispute not originally our own, and concerning us only as one of the American group of nations, has been rejected in no doubtful tones by organs of public opinion which have no fondness for Great Britain.

Whether any foreign government has taken the same att.i.tude is not known,--probably there has been no official protest against the apparent admission of a principle which binds n.o.body but the parties to it. Do we ourselves realize that, happy as the issue of our intervention has been, it may entail upon us greater responsibilities, more serious action, than we have a.s.sumed before? that it amounts in fact--if one may use a military metaphor--to occupying an advanced position, the logical result very likely of other steps in the past, but which nevertheless implies necessarily such organization of strength as will enable us to hold it?

Without making a picture to ourselves, without conjuring up extravagant contingencies, it is not difficult to detect the existence of conditions, in which are latent elements of future disputes, identical in principle with those through which we have pa.s.sed heretofore. Can we expect that, if unprovided with adequate military preparation, we shall receive from other states, not imbued with our traditional habits of political thought, and therefore less patient of our point of view, the recognition of its essential reasonableness which has been conceded by the government of Great Britain? The latter has found capacity for sympathy with our att.i.tude,--not only by long and close contact and interlacing of interests between the two peoples, nor yet only in a fundamental similarity of character and inst.i.tutions. Besides these, useful as they are to mutual understanding, that government has an extensive and varied experience, extending over centuries, of the vital importance of distant regions to its own interests, to the interests of its people and its commerce, or to its political prestige. It can understand and allow for a determination not to acquiesce in the beginning or continuance of a state of things, the tendency of which is to induce future embarra.s.sments,--to complicate or to endanger essential welfare. A nation situated as Great Britain is in India and Egypt scarcely can fail to appreciate our own sensitiveness regarding the Central American isthmus, and the Pacific, on which we have such extensive territory; nor is it a long step from concern about the Mediterranean, and anxious watchfulness over the progressive occupation of its southern sh.o.r.es, to an understanding of our reluctance to see the ambitions and conflicts of another hemisphere approach, even remotely and indirectly, the comparatively peaceful neighborhoods surrounding the Caribbean Sea, bearing a threat of disturbance to the political distribution of power or of territorial occupation now existing.

Whatever our interests may demand in the future may be a matter of doubt, but it is hard to see how there can be any doubt in the mind of a British statesman that it is our clear interest now, when all is quiet, to see removed possibilities of trouble which might break out at a less propitious season.

Such facility for reaching an understanding, due to experience of difficulties, is supported strongly by a hearty desire for peace, traditional with a commercial people who have not to reproach themselves with any lack of resolution or tenacity in a.s.suming and bearing the burden of war when forced upon them. ”Militarism” is not a preponderant spirit in either Great Britain or the United States; their commercial tendencies and their isolation concur to exempt them from its predominance. Pugnacious, and even warlike, when aroused, the idea of war in the abstract is abhorrent to them, because it interferes with their leading occupations, and its demands are alien to their habits of thought. To say that either lacks sensitiveness to the point of honor would be to wrong them; but the point must be made clear to them, and it will not be found in the refusal of reasonable demands, because they involve the abandonment of positions hastily or ignorantly a.s.sumed, nor in the mere att.i.tude of adhering to a position lest there may be an appearance of receding under compulsion. Napoleon I. phrased the extreme position of militarism in the words, ”If the British ministry should intimate that there was anything the First Consul had not done, _because he was prevented from doing it_, that instant he would do it.”

Now the United States, speaking by various organs, has said, in language scarcely to be misunderstood, that she is resolved to resort to force, if necessary, to prevent the territorial or political extension of European power beyond its present geographical limits in the American continents. In the question of a disputed boundary she has held that this resolve--dependent upon what she conceives her reasonable policy--required her to insist that the matter should be submitted to arbitration. If Great Britain should see in this political stand the expression of a reasonable national policy, she is able, by the training and habit of her leaders, to accept it as such, without greatly troubling over the effect upon men's opinions that may be produced by the additional announcement that the policy is worth fighting for, and will be fought for if necessary. It would be a matter of course for her to fight for her just interests, if need be, and why should not another state say the same? The point--of honor, if you like--is not whether a nation will fight, but whether its claim is just. Such an att.i.tude, however, is not the spirit of ”militarism,”

nor accordant with it; and in nations saturated with the military spirit, the intimation that a policy will be supported by force raises that sort of point of honor behind which the reasonableness of the policy is lost to sight. It can no longer be viewed dispa.s.sionately; it is prejudged by the threat, however mildly that be expressed. And this is but a logical development of their inst.i.tutions. The soldier, or the state much of whose policy depends upon organized force, cannot but resent the implication that he or it is unable or unwilling to meet force with force. The life of soldiers and of armies is their spirit, and that spirit receives a serious wound when it seems--even superficially--to recoil before a threat; while with the weakening of the military body falls an element of political strength which has no a.n.a.logue in Great Britain or the United States, the chief military power of which must lie ever in navies, never an aggressive factor such as armies have been.

Now, the United States has made an announcement that she will support by force a policy which may bring her into collision with states of military antecedents, indisposed by their interests to acquiesce in our position, and still less willing to accept it under appearance of threat. What preparation is necessary in case such a one is as determined to fight against our demands as we to fight for them?

Preparation for war, rightly understood, falls under two heads,--preparation and preparedness. The one is a question mainly of material, and is constant in its action. The second involves an idea of completeness. When, at a particular moment, preparations are completed, one is prepared--not otherwise. There may have been made a great deal of very necessary preparation for war without being prepared. Every const.i.tuent of preparation may be behindhand, or some elements may be perfectly ready, while others are not. In neither case can a state be said to be prepared.

In the matter of preparation for war, one clear idea should be absorbed first by every one who, recognizing that war is still a possibility, desires to see his country ready. This idea is that, however defensive in origin or in political character a war may be, the a.s.sumption of a simple defensive in war is ruin. War, once declared, must be waged offensively, aggressively. The enemy must not be fended off, but smitten down. You may then spare him every exaction, relinquish every gain; but till down he must be struck incessantly and remorselessly.

Preparation, like most other things, is a question both of kind and of degree, of quality and of quant.i.ty. As regards degree, the general lines upon which it is determined have been indicated broadly in the preceding part of this article. The measure of degree is the estimated force which the strongest _probable_ enemy can bring against you, allowance being made for clear drawbacks upon his total force, imposed by his own embarra.s.sments and responsibilities in other parts of the world. The calculation is partly military, partly political, the latter, however, being the dominant factor in the premises.

In kind, preparation is twofold,--defensive and offensive. The former exists chiefly for the sake of the latter, in order that offence, the determining factor in war, may put forth its full power, unhampered by concern for the protection of the national interests or for its own resources. In naval war, coast defence is the defensive factor, the navy the offensive. Coast defence, when adequate, a.s.sures the naval commander-in-chief that his base of operations--the dock-yards and coal depots--is secure. It also relieves him and his government, by the protection afforded to the chief commercial centres, from the necessity of considering them, and so leaves the offensive arm perfectly free.

Coast defence implies coast attack. To what attacks are coasts liable?

Two, princ.i.p.ally,--blockade and bombardment. The latter, being the more difficult, includes the former, as the greater does the lesser. A fleet that can bombard can still more easily blockade. Against bombardment the necessary precaution is gun-fire, of such power and range that a fleet cannot lie within bombarding distance. This condition is obtained, where surroundings permit, by advancing the line of guns so far from the city involved that bombarding distance can be reached only by coming under their fire. But it has been demonstrated, and is accepted, that, owing to their rapidity of movement,--like a flock of birds on the wing,--a fleet of s.h.i.+ps can, without disabling loss, pa.s.s by guns before which they could not lie.

Hence arises the necessity of arresting or delaying their progress by blocking channels, which in modern practice is done by lines of torpedoes. The mere moral effect of the latter is a deterrent to a dash past,--by which, if successful, a fleet reaches the rear of the defences, and appears immediately before the city, which then lies at its mercy.

Coast defence, then, implies gun-power and torpedo lines placed as described. Be it said in pa.s.sing that only places of decisive importance, commercially or militarily, need such defences. Modern fleets cannot afford to waste ammunition in bombarding unimportant towns,--at least when so far from their own base as they would be on our coast. It is not so much a question of money as of frittering their fighting strength. It would not pay.

Even coast defence, however, although essentially pa.s.sive, should have an element of offensive force, local in character, distinct from the offensive navy, of which nevertheless it forms a part. To take the offensive against a floating force it must itself be afloat--naval.

This offensive element of coast defence is to be found in the torpedo-boat, in its various developments. It must be kept distinct in idea from the sea-going fleet, although it is, of course, possible that the two may act in concert. The war very well may take such a turn that the sea-going navy will find its best preparation for initiating an offensive movement to be by concentrating in a princ.i.p.al seaport. Failing such a contingency, however, and in and for coast defence in its narrower sense, there should be a local flotilla of small torpedo-vessels, which by their activity should make life a burden to an outside enemy. A distinguished British admiral, now dead, has said that he believed half the captains of a blockading fleet would break down--”go crazy” were the words repeated to me--under the strain of modern conditions. The expression, of course, was intended simply to convey a sense of the immensity of suspense to be endured.

In such a flotilla, owing to the smallness of its components, and to the simplicity of their organization and functions, is to be found the best sphere for naval volunteers; the duties could be learned with comparative ease, and the whole system is susceptible of rapid development. Be it remembered, however, that it is essentially defensive, only incidentally offensive, in character.

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