The existing contest between Italy and Turkey, confined as it is to the sea and to the possession of Tripoli, has a double interest. It illustrates on the one hand the gradual, yet perpetual, process by which a higher civilization impinges upon a lower; that is, upon one that is lower in virile efficiency, however in some instances it may have been higher in acquired material comfort, or even in literary and artistic achievement. This tendency can neither be regulated by law, nor brought to the bar of law, without injury to the progress of the world toward better universal conditions, to which end it is essential that the efficient supplant the inefficient. On the other hand this collision illustrates the importance of the command of the sea. This also, it should be noted, has been incidental and determinative in the progress of the world. Through having this command, Italy thus far has been able to localize the land fighting in Tripoli, and probably can continue to do so; to the great relief of her own resources, and that of a watching and anxious Europe.

It is to this second consideration that I am here limited by my subject "The Importance of the Command of the Sea"-with a somewhat special reference to that importance as touching the United States. The United States in her turn, after having achieved national efficiency, by the quenching of internal discord in a bitter and bloody contest, has found herself compelled inevitably into the same path of seeming aggression upon less efficient social and political communities; to bear her part of "the white man's burden," as it has been styled. For in essence this process is not one of aggrandizement, but of responsibility; responsibility not to law, which always lags behind conditions, but to moral obligation entailed by the particular circumstances of the moment of action.

This moral side of the question is not irrelevant to the military one of the importance of commanding the

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sea; for granting the end-the moral obligation the means, if not themselves immoral, follow as a matter of course. Of such means, command of the sea is one. Napoleon said that morale dominates war; and it is correspondingly true that a sense of right powerfully reinforces the stability of national attitude and the steadfastness of national purpose. If we have been right, morally, step by step, in the forward march of the past few years, we are morally bound to sustain the position attained, by measures which will provide the necessary means. Of these an adequate navy is among the first; probably, in our case, the chief of all.

In

Here, as always, it is necessary to recur to experience to the past-in order to comprehend the present and to project the future. Why do English innate political conceptions of popular representative government, of the balance of law and liberty, prevail in North America from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific? Because the command of the sea at the decisive era belonged to Great Britain. India and Egypt, administrative efficiency has taken the place of a welter of tyranny, feudal struggle, and bloodshed, achieving thereby the comparative welfare of the once harried populations. What underlies this administrative efficiency? The British navy, assuring in the first instance British control instead of French and thereafter communication with the home country, whence the local power without which administration everywhere is futile. What, at the moment the Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed, insured beyond peradventure the immunity from foreign oppression of the Spanish-American colonies in their struggle for independence? The command of the sea by Great Britain, backed by the feeble navy but imposing strategic situation of the United States, with her swarm of potential commerce-destroyers, which a decade

before had harassed the trade of even the mistress of the seas.

Less conspicuously, but no less truly, to what do Algiers and Tunis, and to what eventually will Morocco, owe redemption from conditions barely, if at all, above the barbarous? To the command of the sea by the nation which already has restored the former two, to be fruitful members of the world community. That South Africa is now a united commonwealth, instead of two opposing communities, such as the North and South of our own country might have been, is due to the same cause; a local preponderance of force insured by sea power. It may safely be claimed that to the navy of the United States chiefly is owing the present Union, instead of the existence of two rival nations vying, or trying to vie, with each other in military preparations, like the nations of Europe. The four years' struggle of the Confederate States might not have ended in exhaustion, had it not been for the blockade, which shut in their cotton and shut out their supplies.

Contrast this impressive exhibit, where the command of the sea has been operative, with the history and achievement of those great States which have not possessed it. Contrast Bosnia and Herzegovina for Austria, Alsace and Lorraine for Germany, with the expansion of France, Great Britain, Holland, and with that which Spain once possessed; now lost through an inefficiency, one of the first symptoms of which was the decay of her navy. The magnificent efficiency of the present German Empire strives now, against almost hopeless disadvantage, for the opportunity to exercise that efficiency outside its European limits. Opportunity was lost through the absence of naval force in the past centuries, when the maritime countries were occupying, and, in accordance with their respective political aptitudes, were determining the future of immense tracts of the world. Much time must elapse before we shall know the inside history of the still unarranged dispute with France about Morocco; but there is reason to believe that the consciousness of the British navy at the back of France has been one of the large factors in the negotiations. At least it is ap

parent that bitterness against Great Britain has been even more marked than against France.

The lesson for the United States is plain. In the strategic position before mentioned, in remoteness from Europe, in the rivalries of European nations, we still have a local and international advantage for preponderance in American waters; but it is not so great as to confer certainty without reasonable provision for insuring command of the sea. In the Pacific, which is equally our coast line, and to which the future mostly looks, we have no similar advantage. Much as I dislike and reject the phrase "supremacy in the Pacific," it is true that we there have duties which in case of disputes will require the presence of naval force adequate to command. Duty to the mutual support of our two chief coasts dictates full control of the Panama Canal, which from the military standpoint is the key to any broadly planned system of preparation for national defense.

But obligation is no less on account of the Philippine Islands. Having assumed control of these under imperative circumstances, we are bound in honor to support an undertaking, our fitness for which is attested by results. To them we are responsible for the maintenance of conditions under which material prosperity can advance, and their dissimilar and discordant inhabitants reach a homogeneous civilization and political development which will enable them to govern themselves. To Cuba, though independent, we owe by specific guarantees of maintenance of a like internal security. These national and international functions can be discharged, certainly only by command of the sea. The Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean, with the great controlling stations, Porto Rico, Guantanamo, the Canal Zone, and Hawaii, depend upon this command, the exponent of which is the navy, and in which ships and stations are interdependent factors. To place the conclusion concretely and succinctly, the question of command of the sea is one of annual increase of the navy. This question

is not "naval," in the restricted sense of the word. It is one of national policy, national security, and national obligation.

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