Chapter 7

NAVAL DEFENSE

There has never been a time since Cain slew Abel when men have not been compelled to devote a considerable part of their energies to self-defense. In the early ages, before large organizations existed or the mechanic arts had made much progress, defense was mostly defense of life itself. As time went on, and people amassed goods and chattels, and organized in groups and tribes, it came to include the defense of property--not only the property of individuals, but also of the tribe and the land it occupied. Still later, defense carne to include good name or reputation, when it was realized that the reputation, even of an organization, could not be destroyed without doing it an injury.

At the present day, owing to the complexity of nations and other organizations, and to the long time during which many of them have existed, the question of defense has become extremely difficult. The places in which defense has been brought to its highest excellence are the large cities of the civilized countries; for there we see that defense of the life, property, and reputation of every individual has been carefully provided for. This has been made possible by the intimate intermingling of the people, the absence of racial rivalries, and the fact that the interests of all are identical in the matter of defense of life, property, and reputation; since, no matter how bad any individual may be, he wishes that others shall be good, in order that he himself may be safe.

The defense of reputation has two aspects: the practical and the sentimental. The practical aspect regards the defense of that element of reputation which affects ability to "make a living"; while the sentimental aspect is concerned with the purely personal reputation of the individual, or with the reputation of an organization or a nation. The sentimental aspect is much more important, especially in enlightened nations, than is realized by some who have not thought much about it; for there is, fortunately, in every decent man a craving for the esteem and even the affection of his fellow men; and a knowledge that, no matter how wealthy or powerful he may be, he cannot be happy if he knows that he is despised.

The fact that individuals organize to acquire the strength of united effort brings about, among organizations, a spirit of competition like that among individuals. It is more intense, however, because no man alone can get up the enthusiasms that ten men acting together can get up, and ten men cannot get up as much as a thousand. The longer any organization is maintained, the sharper this spirit of rivalry grows to be, owing to the feeling of clanship that propinquity and material interests evoke. Its acme is found in those organizations called nations, that have lived together, nourished from the same soil, for generations; where the same loves and jealousies and hates that they now feel were felt by their fathers and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers for centuries back. Among a people possessing the potentialities of national solidarity and greatness this feeling waxes, into a self-sacrificing devotion to the nation and to the land that bore them.

That there should be such a thing is sometimes deplored; because patriotism, like all human qualities, has its bad side and its unfortunate effects. If it were not for patriotism there would probably be no war, and the greatest suffering that the world endures would thus be obviated. But if it were not for patriotism there would be no competition among nations; and in any one nation there would be no national spirit, no endeavor on the part of every man to do his part toward making her strong, efficient, and of good repute or toward making the people individually prosperous and happy. In the same way, on a smaller scale, many people deplore the necessity of competition among organizations, saying that it is ruthless and selfish; that it stamps out the individual; that it makes every man a mere cog in a money-getting machine; that it brings about strife, hatred, jealousies, and sometimes murders; that, if it were not for competition, all men would live together in peace.

This may be so; but if it were not for competition there would probably be little of that strenuous, endeavor without which no effective progress in advancing the welfare of men has ever yet been made. Of course, it may be that what we call "progress" has really not advanced the welfare of men; that the savage in Samoa is as happy as the millionaire in New York; that knowledge itself is not an unmixed benefit; and if we accept this view, we may logically declare that competition, progress, and patriotism are all disadvantages. But who will go so far? It seems to be a fact that we cannot get something for nothing: that every plus has its minus, every joy its pain; that if men succeed in passing beyond the savage state, and in overcoming the forces of nature, so that they can live in houses with every modern luxury and convenience, they must pay for it by a condition of competition that causes personal jealousies among individuals, commercial wars among organizations, physical wars among nations.

Yet the instinctive desire of every one is for peace and comfort, for the maximum of good with the minimum of exertion; and therefore the normal person dislikes to see interjected into human life the abominable confusion of war. From this it comes about that every nation, even if it consciously brings about a war, always endeavors to make it appear that the other party is the aggressor. For this reason in every country the army and navy are said to be for the "defense" of the country. No nation, no matter how aggressive its policy may secretly be, openly declares that it intends to provoke aggression. This does not mean that any nation ever deliberately raises an army and navy for aggression, and then consciously deceives the world in regard to its intention; for men are so constituted as to feel more or less unconsciously that their interests and desires are proper and those of their opponent wrong; and every nation is so firmly persuaded of the righteousness of its own policies as to feel that any country which exhibits antagonism toward these policies is trying to provoke a fight.

Now these policies, especially after a nation has adhered to them for long, seem vital in her eyes, and they usually are so. To Great Britain, whose major policy is that she must be mistress of the seas, it is vital that she should be. Her people are surrounded by the ocean, and unless they are willing simply to eke out an agricultural existence, it is essential that she should be able to manufacture articles, send them out in ships to all parts of the world, and receive in return money and the products of other lands. In order that she may be able to do this, she must feel sure that no power on earth can restrain the peaceful sailing to and fro of her exporting and importing ships. This assurance can be had only through physical force; it can be exerted only by a navy. Germany has been gradually coming into the same position, and the same clear comprehension, owing to the increase of her population, the growth of their desire for wealth, and their realization of the control by Great Britain and the United States of large areas of the surface of the earth. Germany's determination to break down, at least in part, that overpowering command of the sea which Great Britain wields has been the result. The ensuing rapid growth and excellence of Germany's navy and merchant marine brought Germany and England into sharp competition. Military and naval men have seen for years that these competing nations would have to go to war some day in "self-defense."

In the minds of some people the idea of what constitutes "defense" is rather hazy, and "defense" is deemed almost synonymous with "resistance." Perhaps the clearest idea of what constitutes "defense" is given in a sentence in Webster's Dictionary, that reads: "The inmates of a fortress are _defended_ by its guns, _protected_ by its walls, and _guarded_ against surprise by sentries."

The distinction is important, and the partially aggressive character of defense it indicates is exemplified in all walks of human and brute life. Any animal, no matter how peaceably inclined, will turn on his aggressor--unless, indeed, he runs away. No one ever saw any brute oppose a merely passive resistance to attack. Every man recognizes in himself an instinct to hit back if he is hit. If it be an instinct, it must have been implanted in us for a reason; and the reason is not hard to find in the universal law of self-protection, which cannot be satisfied with the ineffectual method of mere parrying or resisting.

Naval defense, like military defense, therefore, is not passive defense only, but contains an element of "offense" as well. When the defense contains in large measure the element of offense, it is said in military parlance to be "offensive-defensive"; and the most effective defensive is this offensive-defensive. When a defending force throws off its defensive attitude entirely and advances boldly to attack, it is said to have "assumed the offensive"; but even this assumption, especially if it be temporary--as when a beleaguered garrison makes a sortie--does not rob the situation of its defensive character.

For these reasons the dividing line between offense and defense is very vague; and it is made more vague through a realization by all military people that the offense has certain decided advantages over the defense (unless the defense has the advantage of position); so that when strained relations between two nations come, each is so fearful that the other will take the offensive first, when the two nations are near each other, that it is apt to take the offensive first--in real _self-defense!_ A striking illustration is the action of certain European Powers in the latter part of July, 1914.

In addition to the sincere convictions of either party, there is also apt to be considerable yielding to the temptation to persuade the world that the other party is the aggressor, merely to get the sympathy that usually goes to the innocent victim--the support of what Bismarck called "the imponderables." Few wars have been frankly "offensive," like the conquests of Alexander, Cæsar, and Pizarro, at least in modern times; each side has usually claimed (and often sincerely believed) that its action was demanded in self-defense and that its cause was just.

To some in the United States naval defense means merely defense against invasion. This notion is of recent growth, and certainly was not held by the framers of our Constitution. Section 8 of Article I defines the powers of Congress; and although eight of the eighteen paragraphs deal exclusively with measures of defense on sea and land, only one of those paragraphs (the fifteenth) deals with invasion. The, first paragraph reads:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, _to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States_; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

The juxtaposition of the words "common defense" and "general welfare" in this admirably written paragraph could hardly have been accidental, or have been due to any other cause than a juxtaposition of those ideas in the minds of the Constitution's framers. And what more natural connection can there be between any two ideas than between those of common defense and general welfare, since the general welfare of no country has ever continued long unless it was defended. Now the general welfare of every maritime power has always been intimately concerned with its sea-borne commerce. It is only by means of sea-borne commerce, for instance, that Americans can live in the way Americans wish to live. "General welfare" means more than mere existence. A mere existence is the life a savage lives. Furthermore, the general welfare of a country requires the safety of its exported and imported goods while on the sea, and includes the right of its citizens to travel with safety in every land, to buy and sell in foreign ports, to feel a proper measure of self-respect and national respect wherever they may go, and to command from the people of the lands they visit a proper recognition of their claims to justice.

Naval defense may, therefore, be said to consist of three parts:

1st--Defense of the coast against bombardment and invasion.

2d--Defense of the trade routes traversed by ships carrying the exports and imports of the country.

3d--Defense of the national policy, including defense of the nation's reputation, honor, and prestige.

Of these, defense of the coast against bombardment and invasion is the easiest, and defense of the national policy the most difficult; because in preventing bombardment and invasion the defender has the strategical advantage of being nearer home than the adversary; while in the defense of a country's policy, a naval force may have to "assume the offensive," and go even to the far distant coasts of the enemy--as the Russian fleet went to Tsushima, where it met its death.

In that part of naval defense which is concerned with trade routes, the strategical advantage must go, in general, to that side which is the nearer to the locality where the decisive battle may occur.

In laying down a policy of naval defense, however, it is not necessary to consider these three parts separately, because no nation can ever tell whether in the distant future its naval defense will have to be used directly for any one of the three, or for all. In general terms, it may be stated that in nearly all naval wars the fleet has been used more for the defense of the nation's policy than for the actual defense of the coasts or the trade routes. This does not mean that there has never been a bombardment or invasion, or that the defense of trade routes may not have been the cause of the war itself; but it does mean that in actual wars bombardment or invasion has been rare, the capture of merchant vessels has played a minor part, and the deciding events have been battles between two fleets, that were often far from the land of either.

Owing to the fact that within modern times most of the important countries of the world have been those of continental Europe, with frontiers contiguous, and in fact identical, the defense of a country has been largely committed to the army, and most of the wars have been on land. The country standing in exception to this has been Great Britain, whose isolated and insular situation demanded a defense that was strictly naval. The tremendous advance in recent times of the engineering arts, by which ships became larger and faster, and able to carry more powerful and accurate guns than ever before, has enhanced the value of naval power and enabled Great Britain to reach all over the surface of the earth, and become more powerful than any continental nation. Thus she has made out of the very weakness of her position a paramount tower of strength.

Naval defense was taken up systematically in Great Britain in the eighth century by King Offa, to whom is credited the maxim, "He who would be secure on land must be supreme at sea"; but it must have dropped to a low ebb by 1066, for William of Normandy landed in England unopposed. Since that time Great Britain's naval defense, committed to her navy, has increased steadily in effectiveness and power, keeping pace with the increase in the national interests it defended, and utilizing all the growing resources of wealth and science which the world afforded. Until the present crisis, Great Britain's naval defense did its most important work during Napoleon's time, when Great Britain's standing, like the standing of every other European nation, was subjected to a strain that it could hardly bear. So keenly, however, did the nation and the nation's great leader, Pitt, realize the situation that the most strenuous measures were adopted to keep the navy up, press-gangs even visiting the houses of subjects of the King, taking men out and putting them by force on board his Majesty's ships. But the British navy, even more than the British army, brought Great Britain safe out of the Napoleonic danger, and made the British the paramount nation of the world.

Since then Great Britain has waxed more and more powerful, her avowed policy being that her navy should be equal to any other two; realizing that her aloofness in point of national characteristics and policy from all other nations made it possible that a coalition of at least two great nations might be pitted against her at a time when she could not get an ally. Accompanying the growth of the British navy has been the establishment of British foreign trade, British colonies, and British bases from which the navy could work, and the general making of a network of British commerce and British power over the surface of the earth. No other nation has ever dominated so large a part of the surface of the globe as has Great Britain during the last two centuries; and she has done it by means of her naval power. This naval power has been, in the language of Great Britain, for the "imperial defense"; not for coast defense alone, but for the defense of all the imperial interests, commercial and political, and even the imperial prestige. And this defense of prestige, it may here be remarked, is not a vainglorious defense, not an exhibition of a swaggering, swashbuckling spirit, but a recognition of the fact that the minds of men are so constituted that the prestige of an individual, an organization, or a nation has a practical value and is an actual force. No government that appreciates its responsibilities will willingly risk the prestige of the nation which it governs, because it knows that any weakening of it will be followed by a weakening of influence and a consequent increase of difficulty in attaining some "end in view."

The greatness of the British navy, compared with that of the British army and the other elements of Great Britain's government, has taken on magnified dimensions during the last half century. So long as war-ships used sails as their principal motive power, so long were they forced to employ methods of construction and equipment that forbade the efficient employment of high-power guns, the attainment of great speed, and the use of instruments of precision; so long, in other words, was their military effectiveness prevented from increasing greatly. But when the British navy decided to abandon sail power altogether and propel their ships by steam, a new phase was entered upon, in which every resource of the engineering arts and the physical sciences was called into requisition; and now, on board a dreadnaught, battle cruiser, destroyer, or submarine, can be found the highest examples of mechanical and electrical art and science. Every material resource which the brain and wealth of man can compass is enlisted in her naval defense; and in order to take advantage of the rapidity and certainty of movement they afford for operating fleets and ships, there has been a great advance in methods of operation, or, in military parlance, "staff work." To assist this work, the radio, the cable, and even the humble typewriter have contributed their essential share, with the result that to Great Britain's naval defense there has been devoted an extraordinary degree of efficiency, continuous effort, a more varied activity, and a larger expenditure of money than to any other object of man's activity.

The United States navy, to which is committed the naval defense of the United States, has followed the same lines as the British; and its task, while in some ways easier, is in other ways more difficult. Perhaps the chief reason why the naval defense of Great Britain is so difficult is the extreme closeness of her borders to the borders of her possible foes--for the English Channel is only twenty-three miles across from Dover to Calais. And yet the very narrowness of the Channel there lends a certain element of assistance to the defender of either coast against an enemy like Germany, because it enables the defender, by simply protecting that narrow area, to prevent an enemy from passing to the sea or from it, except by going around the British Isles. But while it is interesting thus to compare the tasks of two navies by comparing the lengths of coast line, populations, wealth, and areas of their countries, or their distances from possible antagonists, such comparisons are really misleading; for the reason that all nations are on a par in regard to the paramount element of national defense, which is defense of national policy. It was as important to Belgium as it was to Germany to maintain the national policy, and the army of Belgium was approximately as strong as that of Germany in proportion to her wealth, area, and population; but nevertheless the Belgium army was routed, and Belgium was conquered by the German army.

Much has been written to prove that the sole reason for the possession of the paramount navy by Great Britain is that the soil of Great Britain cannot support her people. In an essay, entitled "Naval Power," which I contributed to the _United States Naval Institute_ in 1911, the fallacy of this was shown; and it was pointed out that even if Great Britain grew more than enough to feed her people, life could be made unendurable to the 60,000,000 living there (or to the people in any civilized and isolated country) by an effective blockading fleet. _The question of how great a navy any country needs depends, not on the size, but on the policies of that country, and on the navies of the countries that may oppose those policies_. The navy that a country needs is a navy that can defend its policies, both offensively and defensively. If, for instance, the United States does not wish to enforce any policy that Great Britain would oppose, or to oppose any policy that Great Britain would enforce, then we may leave her navy out of consideration. But if we decide that we must maintain a certain policy which a certain country may oppose, then we must have a navy at least equal to hers; because we do not know whether we should have to meet that navy near our coast, or near hers, or far away from both. For the reason, furthermore, that a war with a European Power might occur at a period of strained relations with some Asiatic Power, we must realize the temptation to that Asiatic Power to seize the opportunity and attack us on the Pacific side, knowing that we should need all our navy on the Atlantic side. This seems to mean that in order to have an effective naval defense (since we are precluded by our policy from having European allies and no South American country could give us any effective naval help) we must have on each ocean a fleet as strong as that of any nation on that ocean against whose wishes we may have to enforce a policy--or against whose policy we may have to oppose resistance.

The essential requirement of any defense is that it shall be adequate; because an inadequate defense will be broken down, while the attack will retain a large proportion of its original strength. In the _United States Naval Institute_, in 1905, the present writer showed, by means of a series of tables, how, when two forces fight, the force which is originally the more powerful will become gradually more powerful, relatively to the weaker, as the fight goes on. That, for instance, if two forces start with the relative powers of 10 and 8, the weaker force will be reduced so much more rapidly than the stronger that when it has been reduced to zero the stronger force will have a value of 5.69. The values mentioned indicated the actual fighting strength--strength made up of all the factors--material, physical, and psychic--that constituted it. Of course, none of these factors can ever be accurately compared; but nevertheless the tables seemed to prove that in a contest between two forces whose total strengths are as 10 and 8 one force will be reduced to zero, while the other will be reduced not quite one-half.

One of the lessons drawn was "the folly of ineffectual resistance." Doubtless a clearer lesson would have been "the folly of ineffectual preparedness"; because, when the decision as to resistance or non-resistance is forced upon a nation, the matter is so urgent, the military, political, and international conditions so complex, and the excitement probably so intense, that a wise decision is very difficult to reach; whereas the question of what constitutes effectual preparedness is simple, and needs merely to be approached with calm nerves and an open mind.

Inasmuch as the psychic element in defense is the strongest single element, it is apparent that if the decision is reached to prepare an effectual defense the nation must be absolutely united, and must appreciate at its full value the debilitating influence of opposition to the measure; for, no matter how much money a nation may expend, no matter how many lives it may sacrifice, its defense cannot have an efficiency proportional to the effort if a considerable number of its citizens are permitted to oppose it.

In our own country there has been so much talking and writing recently about defense, that there is danger of the question coming to be considered academic; though no question is more practical, no question is more urgent.

_Defense must defend_.