William Oliver Stevens

“ The effectiveness of a great navy depends first on its quality, secondly, on how it is handled, and thirdly, on its power of reaching the enemy's communications.
The quality of a navy is two-fold, material and personal. In material, the great problem of modern days is to keep abreast of the time. The danger to a navy lies in conservatism and bureaucratic control. There is always the chance that a weaker power may defeat the stronger, not by using the old weapons, but by devising some new weapon that will render the old ones obsolete. ”

“ How far are we willing to go to sustain the Open Door policy in the Far East? Are we determined to resist the immigration of Asiatics? Are we bound to hold against conquest our outlying possessions,—the Philippines, Guam, Hawaiian Islands, and Alaska? Shall we play a "lone hand" among nations, or join an international league? Until there is some answer to these questions of foreign policy, our naval program is based on nothing definite. In short, the naval policy of a nation should spring from its national policy. ”

“ Against such formidable floating castles, the light ships of Agrippa and Octavius could adopt only skirmishing tactics. They rushed in where they could shear away the oar blades of an enemy without getting caught by the great grappling irons swung out from his decks. They kept clear of the heavy stones from the catapults through superior speed and ability to maneuver quickly, but they were unable to strike their ponderous adversaries any vital blow. ”

“ Interdiction of enemy trade has always been the great weapon of sea power; and hence, though mines, submarines, and the menace of the High Seas Fleet itself made a close blockade of the German coast impossible, Great Britain in the World War steadily extended her efforts to cut off Germany's intercourse with the overseas world. Germany, on the other hand, while unwilling or unable to take the risks of a contest for surface control of the sea, waged cruiser warfare on British and Allied commerce, first by surface vessels, and, when these were destroyed, by submarines. ”

“ Angles, Saxons, Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals, Vikings, Slavs, Arabs, and Turks poured over the broken barriers of the empire and threatened to extinguish the last spark of western and Christian civilization. Out of this welter of invasions and the anarchy of petty kingdoms arose finally the powerful nations that perpetuated the inheritance from Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, and developed on this foundation the newer institutions of political and intellectual freedom that have made western civilization mistress of the world. ”

“ The persistent enmity of the French king for the Dutch gained nothing for France but everything for England. Unwittingly he poured out his resources in money and men to the end that England should become the great colonial and maritime rival of France. As a part of her spoils England had gained New York and New Jersey, thus linking her northern and southern American colonies, and she had taken St. Helena as a base for her East Indies merchantmen. She had tightened her hold in India, and by repeatedly chastising the Barbary pirates had won immunity for her traders in the Mediterranean. ”

“ Under this intelligent stimulus, Portuguese navigators within a century rounded the Cape of Good Hope, opened the sea route to the Indies, discovered Brazil, circumnavigated the globe, and made Portugal the richest nation in Europe, with a great colonial empire and claims to dominion over half the seas of the world. Portuguese ships carried her flag from Labrador (which reveals its discoverers in its name) and Nova Zembla to the Malay Archipelago and Japan. ”

“ Nor can a merchantship be transformed into a cruiser, as in the American navy of a hundred years ago. The place of shipping in sea power is therefore subsidiary. In fact, unless a nation can control the sea, the amount of its wealth dispersed in merchantmen is just so much loss in time of war.
The major element in sea power is the fleet, but possession of the largest navy is no guarantee of victory or even of control of the sea. Size is important, but it is an interesting fact that most of the great victories in naval history have been won by a smaller fleet over a larger. ”

“ After Athens, Carthage inherited the trident, and in turn fell before the energy of a land power, Rome. And as the Roman Empire grew to include practically all of the known world, every waterway, river and ocean, served to spread Roman law, engineering, and ideals of practical efficiency, at the same time bringing back to the heart of the Empire not only the products of the colonies, but such impalpable treasures as the art, literature, and philosophy of Greece. ”

“ With all the enormous development of the ships and weapons, it must be remembered that the man is, and always will be, greater than the machine.
As to handling the navy, first of all the War Staff and the commander in chief must solve the strategic problem correctly. The fate of the Spanish Armada in the 16th Century and that of the Russian navy at the beginning of the 20th are eloquent of the effect of bad strategy on a powerful fleet. Secondly, the commander in chief must be possessed of the right fighting doctrine—the spirit of the offensive. ”

“ At the outbreak of the American War, France and England had been engaged in a death grapple in which the rights of neutrals were trampled under foot. Napoleon, by his paper blockade and confiscations on any pretext, had been a more glaring offender. But America's quarrel was after all not with France, who needed American trade, but with England, a commercial rival, who could back her restrictions by naval power. Once France was out of the war, the United States found it easy to come to terms with England, whose commerce was suffering severely from American privateers. ”

“ Frail as the early ships were and great as were the perils they had to face, communications by water were far centuries faster and safer than communications by land. Hence civilization followed the path of the sea. Even in these early beginnings it is easy to see that sea-borne commerce leads to the founding of colonies and the formation of an empire whose parts are linked together by trade routes, and finally, that the preservation of such an empire depends an the naval control of sea. This was as true of Crete and Phœnicia as it was later true of Venice, Holland, and England. ”

“ In population and in wealth she was superior to her rival. But the arrogance of her king kept her embroiled in futile wars on the Continent, with little energy left for the major issue, the conquest of the sea. Finally, when the war of American Independence left her a free hand to concentrate on her navy as against that of England, France lost through the fatal weakness of policy which corrupted all her officers with the single brilliant exception of Suffren. The French naval officer avoided battle on principle, and when he could not avoid it he accepted the defensive. ”

“ Modern artillery placed at Calais, for instance, could shell London and cover the transportation of troops in the teeth of a fleet. Aircraft cross land and sea with equal ease. The submersible has come to stay. Indeed, it looks as if the navy of the future will tend first to the submersible types and later abandon the sea for the air, and the "illimitable pathways of the sea" will yield to still more illimitable pathways of the sky. The consequence is bound to be a closer knitting of the peoples of the world through the conquering of distance by time. ”

“ Success came to depend on the adaptability and mechanical skill of personnel, as well as their courage and discipline, and also upon the progressive spirit of constructors and naval experts, faced with the most difficult problems, the wrong solution of which would mean the waste of millions of dollars and possible defeat in war. Every change had to overcome the spirit of conservatism inherent in military organizations, where seniority rules, errors are sanctified by age, and every innovation upsets cherished routine. ”

“ Instead of concentrating on the coast of France and Spain, it tried to defend every outlying post where the flag might be threatened. Thus the superior English fleet was scattered all over the world, from Calcutta to Jamaica, while the French fleets came and went at will, sending troops and supplies to America and challenging the British control of the sea. Had the French navy been more efficient and energetic in its leadership France might have made her ancient enemy pay far more dearly for her strategic blunder. As it was, England lost her colonies in America. ”

“ The astonishing powers of resistance and the deadly effect of the broadsides of the Galleon of Venice displayed in a long and successful fight against an entire fleet of galleys should have had the effect of making a revolution in naval architecture fifty years before that change actually occurred. But men of war of those days were built after the models of Venetian architects, and the latter clung doggedly to the galley. They overlooked the great defensive and offensive powers of the galleon displayed in this story and saw only the fact that she was becalmed and unable to move. ”

“ Her navy, despite the vices it had caught from the Stuart régime, had become firmly established as a permanent institution with a definite organization. By this time every party recognized its essential importance to England's future.
Nevertheless, whatever satisfaction may be felt by men of English speech in this rapid growth of England's power and prestige as a result of the three wars with the Dutch, one cannot avoid the other side of the picture. A people small in numbers but great in energy and genius was hounded to the point of extinction by the greed of its powerful neighbors. ”