Our navy and the next war

Preface

If ever the navy of the United States needed the intelligent support of the American people, it is at the present moment. And it is fortunate that interest is now growing, and that a disposition on the part of our citizens to force action toward the meeting of the needs of the service is beginning

to show itself.

{On one point there seems to be no difference of opinion — that if we are to have a navy at all, it should be as efficient as it possibly can be made.*"] We have to-day individual ships that are the admiration of foreign naval architects. We have officers and men on board of them that we believe are the equal of those in any other service. We have certain materials of war that are as good as those manufactured for other fleets. \ But what we have not appreciated is that efficient individual ships and efficient crews do not alone make a powerful navy. These units must be welded into an efficient whole by an organization and administration which co-ordinate their capabilities and direct their efforts toward a common end.

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In building up our navy, the public mind has been centred too much on the power of the single ship. It has taken no account of all the various accessories essential to the maintenance of the fleet.

In a recent article on the British navy, Admiral Lord Charles Beresford said: "We have had no naval war that threatened our existence for over a century. But if such a war had occurred any time in the last forty years preceding the creation of a war staff, our disorganization would have been complete. How in those years the navy ever carried out its duties without a war staff is a marvel ; it could only have been done by the superb loyalty of those afloat, who have always done their best and never allowed the word 1 impossible ' to exist. The Beresford committee of 1909 proved up to the hilt the unreadiness of the fleet if a sudden war had been declared. The creation of a war staff (as a result of the investigation) has removed this danger."

In that same year, 1909, the President of the United States appointed a commission to consider the state of our own navy. The report of that board is strikingly similar to that of the Beresford committee. It revealed a condition that astounded even the service. But it accomplished nothing. For Congress refused to supply the remedy.

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Fortunately the superb loyalty of our own officers and men, who " have always done their best and never allowed the word 'impossible' to exist," enabled our ships to carry on their work since then in a way that has, on many occasions, won the praise of foreign experts. In the face of a policy that threatened the very existence of the service, in spite of an unbalanced battle fleet, in spite of a serious shortage in its personnel, in the face of every discouragement, our officers and men have striven, and are still striving, for efficiency. But this goal will not be reached, nor even closely approached, until the doctrine is thoroughly understood that there must be an intelligent comprehension on the part of the government of the purpose for which a navy exists. The people through their representatives — that is, the government — must encourage further the navy's legitimate efforts and fill its unquestioned military needs. They must develop a policy, free from any taint of partisan politics, that will secure the development of the navy in harmony with the purpose for which it exists. They must demand of the navy a policy, for which officers of the navy should be held to strict accountability, and must secure with equal loyalty plans in support of that policy.

Shall we continue to neglect our military needs and withhold that support which alone can supply viii PREFACE

the dynamic force that will make of the fleet an efficient instrument capable of fulfilling the purpose for which it exists ?

Robert W. Neeser.

New Yoke, March i, 1915.

Contents

PAGE

Preface v

CHAPTER

Chapter I Our Situation

A NATION should develop its physical power for offense or defense in the same way that an individual keeps his body strong and healthy for his daily tasks. The nation is but an elaboration of the individual. Both are governed by the same laws. Each is endowed with spiritual and physical attributes. The development of these is entirely in the hands of the nation or of the individual. A nation that develops its vital attributes but fails to develop its spiritual and physical attributes is in the class with an individual who has grown, through indolence and overfeeding, too obese to defend himself and too dull-witted to avoid his antagonist.

It is strange but nevertheless true that the statesmen of our government have never been able to appreciate the true meaning of Clausewitz's philosophy that: "War "is only a continuation, by other means, of national policy." War, by the statesman, must be considered as an instrument of his nation's policy. If we accept the truth of this philosophy we are confronted with the conclusion that our statesmen in Washington are directly responsible to the people for the preparedness of its armed forces. The nation's policies are in the keeping of its statesmen. Such policies require, for their continuance, national force, both moral and physical. If the outside pressure against a just policy is strong, a greater national force must be exerted. National force is, in time of peace, diplomatic. Diplomatic notes, ententes, and understandings are the life-giving force behind a policy. When these have failed and the policy is vital to the welfare and progress of the nation, military force takes the place of diplomatic intercourse. Thus it is seen that the nation's policies become the starting-point in all calculations of war strength. The statesman must distinguish between those aims which his nation can abandon and those which are worth fighting for. The statesman must be a man of keen understanding, with a grasp of the fundamentals of history. He must study the history of those nations to which his own nation may, in the course of time, draw near in the field of competition, with danger of collision. Thus it becomes his duty to study the purpose and policy of those nations which may, in the course of their own expansion, challenge his policies, and he must, therefore, understand the

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methods that can be employed to assert his own government's purpose.

Unhappily, in America, our statesmen have not reckoned with the necessity of maintaining behind our policies sufficient armed forces to perpetuate them. They seem to believe that if the nations of the world have given their tacit consent to our policies nothing more is necessary. They have been sustained in this method of diplomacy through the increasing acceptance of the principle of arbitration by the people of this nation, notwithstanding the fact that the causes of every one of our own great national struggles were such as to prohibit settlement by any other means than a resort to arms. But when this creation of man's credulity has failed, the nation will come face to face with a condition from which there can be no turning. A policy vigorously challenged by another nation can be settled in two ways only: either by the abandonment of the policy, or else by a war to maintain it. There is no more despicable figure in history than the man who rushes his country into a war for which that nation is unprepared. A true statesman aims to harmonize the national policies with his country's readiness for war. He I does not attempt to assert ideals which the armed forces of his country are incapable of defending. Under the moral code the true responsibility of a nation is not for the preservation of peace, but for abstention from wrong, and it must be assumed among the civilized nations that each strives to be morally right in its dealings with others. Our national policies are held by the people of the United States to be morally right and necessary to the life and happiness of the people; yet, knowing this, we as a nation refuse to face the unpleasant realization that we may some day be called upon to engage in war in the defense of these policies.

Those who champion the cause of arbitration and universal peace, believing that thereby they may cast off the burden of armaments, by so doing only bring the country they serve nearer to the very thing that they wish most to avoid; and when that hideous monster, War, is at hand, their country lies helpless before the nations that t have prepared themselves for the fray. Can any man really believe that such policies as the Monroe Doctrine, the exclusion of Asiatics, and the guarantee of the neutrality of the Panama Canal can be enforced by a court of arbitration?

Yet these three great policies of American diplomacy are our policies of self-defense. They are the paper bulwarks behind which the American nation defends its position and principles in the world of competing nations. Once this barrier is overthrown, the very life of the nation as

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an independent and free people may cease to exist. Once the military nations of Europe or Asia have secured a foothold on the American continent, the United States will be forced to join the ranks of the military nations and, through a long, bloody, and exhausting war, hurl from the continent those who have invaded the territories of our assumed overlordship.

In all discussions over armaments in this country nowhere do we hear the voice of the statesmen. Their influence has been directed to the curtailment of our national defenses. How, then, can they acquit themselves before the nation when we are face to face with that final arbiter, war? These statesmen at the head of the government cannot shirk the responsibility for the maintenance of an adequate force to insure victory. A nation of 90,000,000 people, once set in motion against aggression, cannot easily be checked. That the nation is unprepared for war and that defeat is inevitable cannot be forced home after the patriotic fervor of a nation is aroused. The statesman who has forced the issue, regardless of the unpreparedness of his country, may well tremble and endeavor to avert the danger so near at hand; but his puny power is swept aside by the momentum Qf the outraged nation, and he can only impotently contemplate the unequal struggle for which he alone is to blame.

The only conclusion to be drawn is that the American nation to-day is sorely in need of statesmen who have studied the problems of our national existence and are able to apply to their solutions organized knowledge, which is the only basis of success in modern life. The nation's welfare must be intrusted to a continuing body of statesmen whom the nation can hold responsible. If we are to remain supreme in our territorial possessions, including the Panama Canal; if we are to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in spite of the cupidity of nations that are now ruthlessly sacrificing hundreds of thousands of their men on the battle-fields of Europe; if we are to exclude the Asiatic from our Pacific coast; if we are to insist upon the open door in China for our trade, then the statesmen of our nation must keep in closer touch with the preparedness for war of the two arms of our national forces. They must stand ready to go before the country and tell the people just which policies can be maintained and which policies must be abandoned. It is the statesmen, and not the military or naval men, who should be using their efforts to increase the power and efficiency of our nation for the coming struggle for the maintenance of our position in the world.

In every civilized country the organization and application of its resources is the basis of success

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in war. Resources, when stripped of all collateral elements, reduce down to men, material, and money. The organization of these is wholly within the province of the statesmen.

In Section VIII of the Constitution of the United States the authority is vested in Congress to raise and support armies and to provide and maintain a navy, and, further, to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. Who else shall decide upon the size of the army and navy? If the army and navy are inadequate for the purpose of supporting the national policies, whom must the country hold responsible ?

In time of war the civilian, as much as the soldier, is responsible for defeat and disaster. Battles are not lost on the field alone; they may be lost beneath the dome of the Capitol; they may be lost in the cabinet ; or they may be lost in the private office of the secretary of war or the secretary of the navy. But wherever they may be lost, it is our people who will suffer and our soldiers — patriotic citizens — who will die, with a sudden, bitter knowledge that our military policy is a crime against life, a crime against property, and a crime against liberty.

War affects the life, the liberty, and the property of every individual citizen. Beyond that, it imperils the life of the nation. On its issue io OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR

necessarily depend the fate of governments and the happiness of human beings, present and future. The statesman should, therefore, consider it his duty to study peace and the causes which tend to preserve or destroy peace. History teaches us that peace ends in war. If the causes which terminate peace and produce war cannot be removed, and if the legislator does not recognize and know how to create a powerful army, he ceases to be a statesman.

We thus see that we cannot divorce ourselves from the fact that national preparedness must remain in the keeping of the statesman — that is, .the representative of the individual — and that it is the statesman whom the nation must hold responsible for the development of its physical powers. It is idle, nay, useless, to base the size of armies and fleets upon local opinions. These instruments of diplomacy cannot be considered as benefits to a section of the country only. They are national instruments, to be used by the nation for the purpose of maintaining itself a free agent in the world of nations. That the Pacific coast or the Atlantic coast is not adequately prepared to repel an invader is not the care of the local politicians, but of the national statesmen. They must consider, in their demands for military force, the political situation of the entire country and its probable enemies. All decisions which a gov-

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ernment is called upon to make are intimately connected, and in the relations between them is to be sought the continuity of design or unity of purpose, which are different names for a policy.

The endeavors of local politicians to deter national preparedness are the outcroppings of selfseeking in the nation. Their influence upon legislation is harmful, and their effect is to drag the national question of national defense into the arena of local party politics.

A nation which becomes so absorbed in moneymaking pursuits as to neglect to take all those steps which are necessary to secure immunity from attack ceases to impose respect, and so comes to be looked upon as an easy prey. It is only by making costly sacrifices that a nation can earn peace. History shows full well that

"111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay."

Our present lack of preparedness will force us into a slow and irregular transition to a war footing, exposing the country to the dangers of the defensive and the horrors of invasion. The real strength of a definite force depends upon the quality of its soldiers and its officers. Yet the United States has only one-tenth of one per cent of its men trained for war. It is, therefore, only one-tenth of one per cent strong.

In this agitation for naval and military preparedness the country should not make the mistake of laying the blame upon the shoulders of the political party in power. We must remember that the party of opposite beliefs, during a tenure in office of nearly a score of years, during which our military weaknesses were just as evident as they are to-day, often did very little to remedy the defects. It is the duty of the party now in power, after it has seen the besetting dangers of the country's situation, to push remedial legislation. National defense should become a national issue. The party out of power, if it is unpatriotic, will grasp the opportunity of pushing an advantage by declaring that the party in power is failing to provide for the nation's safety, saying nothing of the fact that itself, when in power, was as careless of the national needs. With national defense a party issue, those in power will try to hush things up and prevent a panic. The effect will be, as usual, to defeat the true ends of the nation. The nation should be sufficiently patriotic to agree that national defense is outside of party lines, and both parties should be willing to bring the search-light of public opinion to bear upon the country's needs and stand together to enforce the remedy. National defense is not a political issue; it is a personal issue.

Chapter II Our Diplomatic Position

THE United States stands to-day as the great arbiter of the western hemisphere. It has expanded, by conquest and purchase, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Its northern border touches the frontier of Canada, its southern boundary is washed by the waters of the Rio Grande. Conquest has carried the American symbol of sovereignty into the waters of the Pacific to the very gateway of China. The Caribbean, once the spoil of European nations, now may be said to be almost Americanized by our acquisition of Puerto Rico, by our virtual political domination of these islands still under the rule of tropical races, and by our possession of the Canal route across the Isthmus of Panama, through which will soon pass the commerce of the world.

We have, in our hands, the making of a great empire — not an empire of kings, but an empire in whose womb lies the seed of the nation's fundamental beliefs, recorded with such clearness in the Declaration of Independence. The power is ours, if we are men enough to grasp it, to give to the great world over which our policies have flung their protecting arm those principles of social life to us now fundamental: "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. "

The individual has no right to regard the state as a means for attaining his own ambitions. The nation owes a duty to posterity which can be performed only through the self-sacrifice of the nation to-day. The territories over which flies the American flag, and those territories over which I our institutions have spread their protecting wing, . are a legacy from the past. They were handed down to us, not to fritter away, but to develop and conserve.

With the avowed object of safeguarding these principles of government to those over whom our nation has assumed the guardianship, we have laid down certain policies which other nations are called upon to respect. The most important: of these is contained in the message which President Monroe sent Congress in 1823, in which he said: "We owe it to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those European powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."

When we contemplate the great struggle of blood which is now going on in Europe, a struggle for survival, a struggle for domination, a struggle for conquest, where the wealth of entire nations is risked, can we still adhere to the belief that the mailed fist of some of those nations will not be stretched across the seas to grasp the vast resources, as yet untouched, in the countries to the south of us, from the Rio Grande to Terra del Fuego ?

The limited boundaries of Europe have become too narrow to confine the people of strong and vigorous nations seeking expansion. Already those nations have peacefully penetrated into Mexico and Central and South America. Some of these nations have enunciated the principle that it is the duty of a state to make war to advance its own ideals and its own civilization. Upon the completion of this world war Europe will be even more of an armed camp. The devastation of war will have reduced the resources within their own borders. The rich countries beyond the seas, basking under the sunshine of peace, will offer them alluring inducements to sweep away that doctrine which has been so long distasteful.

Whether this happens or not will depend only upon our power to prevent it. ... .That power will rest with our naval and military forces. If they are weak and incapable of maintaining the Monroe Doctrine, then that doctrine will pass into the unknown. The integrity and neutrality of the Panama Canal will, of necessity, suffer the same fate as the Monroe Doctrine, and, unless we are prepared to defend our position in the world, we shall all see the day when the fruits of American labor, enterprise, and ingenuity will be controlled and administered by a foreign nation. Our colonial possessions and our control over the weak republics of the Caribbean will pass from us because we shall have demonstrated our unfitness to control their destinies. Our trade with the Orient, even that with South America, will be paralyzed through hostile tariffs. Our own shores may feel the iron tread of the invader, and our cities may suffer destruction.

It is a misconception entirely unsupported by history that nations, at the end of a great war, are exhausted. We have only to look to the condition of Germany after her war with France in 1870 and to the military strength of the United States after the four long years of the Civil War. In 1865 the United States had a trained army of a million men. Those men were warriors with fighting blood in their veins. Their love of country was high above the mere lust for gold. We had great men and tried leaders — men trained on the battle-field.

But wherein lie our dangers, and how can they be met ? The nearest and most important danger is in the Pacific. By our own hand we freed Japan from the isolation of centuries of seclusion into a nation fully armed and equipped with that military spirit of which we, as a nation, are so lacking. The rapid assimilation of Western ideas and the successful appropriation of all the material elements of our Christian civilization by that island empire have astounded the world. Within the last decade Japan has emerged conqueror from the struggle of two modern wars.

The growth of the Japanese naval power must cause us to look to the efficiency of our navy, for the interests of Japan and those of the United States are, in some quarters, diametrically opposed. Japan, at first friendly, has suddenly changed her attitude in the tone of her diplomatic intercourse to one not as amicable. Nations are no more mindful of past favors than are individuals. Friendship between nations cannot always stand the strain of a conflict of interests.

A pr^r^ful conquest of China, and the domination of L, markets is apparently Japan's aim — peaceful if possible, but by force if necessary. During the present war Japan has seized the islands that belonged to Germany, lying at the door of our own islands in the Pacific. These new possessions of Japan threaten, if they do not sever, the lines of communication to our own colonies. The occupation of Kiauchau by Japan is only another step in that domination of China which the Japanese statesmen have long intended. 1

An antipathy between races is not itself a cause of war. The true causes of war between nations have their roots in trade rivalry and in the necessity for an expansion of territory for the surplus population of a vigorous race; yet race antipathy in the Pacific contains germs of possible danger. The exclusion of Japanese from our country might be used by Japan as a casus belli. However, the underlying cause of a war between the United States and Japan would not be for the settlement of such a trivial matter. The true reason would be to enforce the Japanese "Monroe Doctrine" and cause the United States to evacuate her commanding positions in the Pacific. The Japanese question may be definitely settled by liberating the Philippines and Guam and retiring from the Orient ; but in the event of such an ac-

1 It is interesting to note that Japan's ultimatum to the Germans at Kiauchau was the identical one which the Germans had presented to the Japanese after the latter had won Port Arthur from the Chinese. Thus does the Oriental know how to bide his time.

tion the United States must also give up its naval bases in those islands. 1

There are now only two great powers that can enter into a war for the supremacy of the Pacific; they are the United States and Japan. Japan's advantage in such a struggle is mainly due to the fact that her entire empire is not only on that ocean, but in the strategic centre of its western border.

Until the day when Japan has succeeded in closing the ports of China to the commerce of all other countries by hostile tariffs, our commerce will seek to compete for its share in the trade of the Flowery Kingdom. That trade, once large, is dwindling year by year. American goods are being forced out of the Chinese market by similar articles manufactured more cheaply in Japan. To regain that trade is impossible unless greater aid is given by our government. No country can ever win the trade of the Orient that does not make it a national concern.

As long as Japan is engaged in a commercial penetration of China she may not yet divert her attention to a further development of the islands lying south of her. Japan, like Germany, is dominated by the military spirit, which accepts

1 So far as the Philippines are concerned, we must either abandon them or else provide ample means for their defense. There is no tertium quid.

as fundamental the biological necessity of war and the duty of self-assertion. Such a nation of warriors will not hesitate to follow through its carefully worked-out plan of national expansion, even though it encounters a nation of double the population and treble the resources. Within the last few years the contact with Western civilization has had a marked effect upon the Japanese people. Their character is undergoing a change. They are losing their military spirit and becoming more wedded to commercialism. This fact has been deplored by their statesmen, who were born and trained under the precepts of Bushido, "the soul of Japan."

Thus we see that in owning islands at her very doors there will be many points of possible contact with this military nation of the Pacific. It, therefore, becomes our duty to prepare our armed forces in the event that we may be called upon to use them, not for aggressive action, but to maintain our dignity in the Orient.

In the Atlantic our Monroe Doctrine has ever been distasteful to Germany. For years she has been colonizing Brazil until now she has there a population of over a million Germans. Whoever is the victor in the present war in Europe, the spirit of the German nation cannot long remain subdued. Even if defeated, it will rise up stronger than ever, with its convictions as solidly implanted as before the war. Germany is one of the world's greatest manufacturing peoples. She requires colonies to supply the raw materials and foodstuffs needed in the Vaterland and colonies wherein to open a field of activity for the immense intellectual labor forces now lying unproductive in Germany. Furthermore, Germany requires, for the protection of her trade, a base in the Caribbean. She has already entered into negotiations with several of the minor independent governments bordering on that sea for the acquisition of such harbors for commercial purposes. Will not the occupation of such harbors, even for commercial reasons, be considered by the United States as a step toward a more general occupation later on, and would it not be resisted ? If Germany should be victorious in the struggle in Europe, which is not beyond the realms of possibility — if Germany were to wrest the command of the sea from England — then our statesmen will have to consider the question of the application and limits of the Monroe Doctrine. If we are willing to engage in a war with Germany, which would probably be a naval war, at least at first, it is doubtful whether we could protect our interests in the Caribbean and in South America. The movement of a fleet across the Atlantic would not be a difficult task for her. It is one that the German general staff has already worked out to the minutest detail. She would have all those difficulties of long lines of communication for the transportation of supplies from her home bases to her fleet that the United States would have if it attempted to move its fleet for hostile purposes across the Pacific; but those are difficulties that German national efficiency, as reflected in her army and navy, can much more easily overcome.