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at Gibraltar held the entrance of the Mediterranean successfully against all comers; but in the same period she twice lost Minorca, an outpost like Hawaii, because the navy was too heavily engaged in the Atlantic, and the land forces elsewhere, to afford relief. In case of the fall of Pearl Harbor, where the defense of Hawaii is concentrated, an enemy temporarily superior to the United States in local naval force would become possessed of a fortified permanent base of operations within half-steaming distance of the Pacific shore. There, in furtherance of his designs, he could establish temporary depots for coaling and repairs; as Japan in the recent war did at the Elliott Islands, sixty miles from Port Arthur, then the decisive center of her military and naval operations. Such advanced temporary positions need a permanent base not too far distant; such as the Japanese home ports. Sasebo and Kure afforded the Elliott Islands, and as Pearl Harbor in the instance considered would to a navy resting upon it.

But, if Pearl Harbor should hold out successfully, a superior American fleet on arrival finds there a secure base of operations, which with its own command of the water, due to its superior strength, enables it to neutralize and ultimately to overthrow any system of operations or attack resting on improvised bases and inferior fleet force. One has only to imagine the effect upon the Japanese land operations in Manchuria, if Rozhestvensky had destroyed Togo's fleet and so established control of the water between Japan and Manchuria. The same line of reasoning applies to Corregidor Island, in Manila Bay; qualified by the greater distance of the Philippines from America.

The Pacific coast of America is less thickly populated, less extensively developed, than the Atlantic. Labor there is dearer, and the local coal distinctly inferior for naval purposes to eastern coal, necessitating sending fuel there. All upon which a fleet depends for vitality is less abundant, less cheap, and therefore more remote. These economical reasons, until qualified by military urgency, render expedient the maintenance of the fleet in the Atlantic. Division of it is forbidden by military considerations, in that it is too small; the half is weaker than any probable enemy. At present, not less than four

months would be required for the battlefleet to reach Pearl Harbor in effective condition. With the Canal less than four weeks would be necessary.

These considerations affect the time that Pearl Harbor needs to hold out, and illustrate the military gain from the Canal; but they do not affect in any sense the necessity for a superior navy. Canal or

no canal, if a fleet be distinctly inferior, it can protect the coast committed to its charge only to a limited degree and for a limited time; unless it can reverse the balance by professional skill. The professional skill may be forthcoming; it is the affair of the commander-in-chief; but the naval security is original superiority of force, and that is the affair of the nation represented in Congress.

A BOND BETWEEN AMERICA

AND AUSTRALIA

THE great English-speaking colonies of Australia and New Zealand will be less immediately and directly affected as to populating by the Panama Canal; but its influence upon Pacific America, including Hawaii, cannot be a matter of small importance to communities which share with equal fervor the determination that their land shall be peopled by men of European antecedents. This identity of feeling on the subject of Asiatic immigration between the North American Pacific and Australia, both inheritors of the same political tradition, is certain to create political sympathies, and may drag into a common action the nations of which each forms a part. This particular determination, in the midst of that recent prevalent unrest which is called the Awakening of the East, is probably the very largest factor in the future of the Pacific, and one which eventually will draw in most of the WestEuropean nations in support of their present possessions in the East. Immediately north of Australia, barricading it, as it were, from west to east, is a veritable Caribbean of European tropical possessions-Sumatra, Java, to New Guineadistributed between Germany, Great Britain, and Holland; while immediately north of them again come the Philippines under American administration. It is needless to say that support to such distant dependencies means military Sea Power;

but it is less obvious, until heeded, that the tendency will impart a common object which may go far toward composing present rivalries and jealousies in Europe. To none, however, can this interest be so vital as to Great Britain, because Australasia is not to her a dominion over alien races, as India is, and as are most European possessions in the East. The Australians and New Zealanders are her own flesh and blood, and should the question of support to them arise, the Panama Canal offers an alternative route not greatly longer to Eastern Australia, and shorter by over 1200 miles to New Zealand. It is, however, in the developed power of Pacific America that Australia in the future will find the great significance of the Panama Canal.

SPARSE POPULATION A PERIL

TO AUSTRALIA

THE question of immigration is now en-
gaging the aroused attention of the new
"Labor" Government in Australia.
Equally with our own Pacific slope, peo-
pling will be there a large influence in the
Sea Power of the Pacific. The question
is felt to be urgent, because much of the
vast territory of Australia is empty. Ex-
cluding aborigines, the population is less
than two to the square mile. In New
Zealand the proportion is only nine. The
huge tropical district known as North
Australia contains but one thousand
whites. After a seeming attempt to cod-
dle the labor question, to sustain high
wages by discouraging immigration, Aus-
tralia is awaking to the untenable and
perilous situation in which a people is
placed when seeking to hold a great in-
heritance which they neither occupy nor
by numbers can develop. It matters not
for the moment whence the danger may
come. From some quarter it will, soon or
late; probably soon. Overcrowded mil-
lions not far off will not look indefinitely
upon open pastures denied them only by a
claim of preemption. An abundant popu-
lation in possession is at once a reason and
a force.

URGENT PLANS FOR AUSTRALIAN
DEFENSE

it should be of interest to recall for it is cognate to our subject-that the year just passed has witnessed the visit to Australia and New Zealand of Lord Kitchener, the greatest military organizer and most distinguished British soldier now in active service. The object, desired by the Colonial Governments, was that a scheme of defense, based upon territory, population, and resources, should be devised after personal examination by the man who as commander-in-chief in India had recast comprehensively the military system upon which rests the defense of three hundred millions of people, and of a territory which in area is a continent. The broad details of his recommendations have been made known through the press, but are not here material. It is sufficient to say that, since his departure, a new "Labor" Government of the Commonwealth has come into power, and in all decisive particulars has adopted his plan. The popular preponderance behind this government is sufficiently indicated by the name-Labor. It is the first since the organization of the Commonwealth-the Union of the several states-that has possessed a homogeneous working majority; and it is significant of the future that the first care of a Labor Ministry has been to provide an efficient military organization, and to entertain measures for the development of a railway system which shall minister, not only to economical development, but to national military security.

In introducing the necessary legislation, the Minister of Defense, after fully adopting Lord Kitchener's scheme, "attacked those who placed faith in arbitration. He declared that Australia would refuse to arbitrate about Asiatic exclusion, and must be prepared to maintain its own laws against attack. If any one asked why the Labor Party was especially keen on military matters, the answer was that the proposed social and industrial reforms of the Party required freedom from disturbance, which they must effectively secure." 1 In the Australian press of the following day, quoted in telegrams to the London "Times," no dissent from this speech is noted. "The reception accorded to the bill indicates a complete severance of the question from party politics. It is assured of an untroubled passage through both houses." 2

To those who do not follow passing events which seem remote from ourselves, 1" The Mail" (Tri-weekly London "Times "'), August 19, 1910. 2The Mail," August 22, 1910.

SENTIMENTS WHICH DEFY EVERY

ARGUMENT BUT FORCE

IT is not difficult here to note the identity of tone with that of the Pacific slope of the United States and of Canada, to the frequent embarrassment of both central governments. It is increasing in imperativeness in British Columbia, is extending thence eastward to Alberta and Saskatchewan, and is felt even as far as Winnipeg. Use the phrase "national honor," "vital interests," or what you will, there are popular sentiments and determinations which defy every argument but force. It is the failure to note these which vitiates much of the argument for arbitration. Such sentiments, on both sides, are large factors to be taken into account in the forecast of the future of Sea Power in an ocean one of whose shores is Asiatic, the other European in derivation.

The Panama Canal will tend to link, and to emphasize the solidarity of, the several English-speaking communities affected by these feelings; and not least by the greater nearness which it will give the North American districts to the more thickly settled, and consequently more powerful, Atlantic regions with which they are politically united. Debatable ground, undeveloped occupation, such as exists in them all, is from this particular point of view an especial source of weakness. In none of them, and especially in Australia and New Zealand, is the population proportionate to the soil. The garrison is not commensurate to the extent of the walls. Hence immigration becomes a pressing question; and in Australia radical land legislation, to break up huge unimproved holdings, and so to facilitate agricultural immigration, is a prominent feature in prospective legislation.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PANAMA TO
BRITISH SEA POWER

THIS state of things is a matter of consummate moment, and will compel the sympathy of American Pacific communities with peoples who discern a common danger, and who share a common political tradition. This weakness explains also the evident closer attachment of Australasia than of Canada to the mother coun

try. Not only is there no alien element, like the French Canadian, but there is far greater exposure, and sense of dependence, such as our own ancestors felt when Canada was French. Here enters the Sea Power of Great Britain into the Pacific with an urgency even greater than that of commercial gain. It is there a question of keeping her own. So far as Australia is weak in numbers, she is proportionately dependent upon power at sea, to prevent those numbers from having to encounter overwhelming odds on shore. In this, her case resembles that of the British Islands themselves. She has shown sense of that dependence by the adoption of naval measures much more virile than those which in Canada are meeting opposition; but at best her resources are not sufficient, and dependence on the mother country will be for a long time inevitable.

Lord Kitchener is quoted as saying, "It is an axiom of the British Government that the existence of the Empire depends primarily upon the maintenance of adequate and efficient naval forces. As long as this condition is fulfilled, and as long as British superiority at sea is assured, then it is an accepted principle that no British dominion can be successfully and permanently conquered by an organized invasion from oversea." The remark was addressed to Australia specifically, and accompanied with the admonition that a navy has many preoccupations; that it may not be able immediately to repair to a distant scene of action; and that therefore the provision of local defense, both by forts and mobile. troops, is the correlative of naval defense. This impedes and delays an invader, lessens his advance and the injury possible, and so expedites and diminishes the task of the navy, when this, having established preponderance elsewhere, is able to appear in force upon the distant waters of a remote dependency.

VITAL IMPORTANCE OF PANAMA TO

THE UNITED STATES

IT will be recognized that the result here stated is that predicated from the arrival of a superior American fleet at Hawaii. What is true of a territory so distant from Great Britain as Australia, is doubly true of the relations of the American navy to its two coasts, the Pacific and the Atlan1"The Mail," April 18, 1910.

tic, of which the Gulf coast in this connection may be regarded accurately as an extension. In the eye of the Navy the three are parts of one whole, of which the link, the neck of the body, will be the Canal; as Australia is not merely a remote dependency, but a living member of the British Empire. There is, however, a vital difference between a member and the trunk. Amputation of the one may consist with continued life, as Great Britain survived the loss of her American colonies; but the mutilation of the trunk means, at the best, life thenceforward on a lower plane of vigor.

The military, or strategic, significance of the Panama Canal therefore is that it will be the most vital chord in that system of transference by which the navy of the United States can come promptly to the support on either coast of the local defenses, which it is to be presumed will be organized as Australia contemplates; even though the presumption be over-sanguine, in view of our national ignorant self-sufficiency. With a competent navy, and with the Panama Canal secured, not merely as to tenure, but with guns of such range as to insure deployment in the open sea at either end, a necessary condition of all sea-coast fortification,-invasion will not be attempted, for it can lead to no adequate results.

IF THE AMERICAN NAVY MET DEFEAT

IT is continually asserted that no invasion of the United States will ever be attempted, because conquest is not possible. Conquest of a fully populated territory is not probable; but dismemberment, such as the instance of France deprived of Alsace and Lorraine by Germany, or more recently of Bosnia and Herzegovina taken from Turkey by Austria, is possible. In the latter case, Turkey, Russia, and all Europe, were silenced by arms two years ago. What is more within the scope of possibility is the exaction from defeat of terms well-nigh unendurable. We recognize well, an Australian has recently said, that if the British navy be once overthrown, a condition of peace will be that its present power shall not be restored. Vae victis. Defeat of the American navy, followed by a prolonged tenure of parts

1

of American territory, which would then
be feasible, might be followed by a de-
mand to give up the Monroe Doctrine, to
abandon Panama, to admit immigration
to which either our Government or a large
part of our population objects, and on no
account to attempt the reëstablishment of
a military or naval force which could re-
deem such consequences.
So Rome for-
ever disabled Carthage.

CRITICAL QUESTIONS ABOUND

IN THE PACIFIC

So much for national defense, the first of military objects, because it is the foundation on which national action securely depends. But as, in actual warfare, the defensive in itself is ineffectual, and useful only as the basis from which the offensive, technically so styled, is exerted, so in a general scheme of national policy, a ring fence of protection, of assured security at home, enables a government to be effectively firm and influential in its support of its external commercial interests, of its necessary policies, and of its citizens. abroad. The frequent impatient disclaimer of such interests, of such policies, and of the necessity of power-not necessarily the use of force-to insure them, simply ignores, not the past only, but current contemporary history. The French minister for Foreign Affairs has spoken recently, in a public utterance, of "the ever-increasing part which diplomacy is called upon to play in the commercial activity of nations." American enterprise and American capital are seeking everywhere lawful outlets and employments; there are many competitors; and all governments. make it part of their business to insist on the lawful admission of their own people, and in many cases to obstruct the intrusion of rivals. The Pacific in its broad extent and upon its coasts contains some of the most critical, because least settled, of these questions. Besides the ancient Asiatic peoples on its western shores, all the principal European states possess therein colonies and naval stations; consequently are possible parties to the as yet remote settlement. America in the Philippines has in the Pacific that which she may not call her own possession, but has recognized as her especial charge.

1 Sir George Reid, the High Commissioner for Australia in Great Britain. "The Mail," July 8, 1910.

INFLUENCE IN THE PACIFIC, NOT SUPREMACY, AMERICA'S PROPER AIM THE Panama Canal will be the gateway to the Eastern Pacific, as Suez is to the Western. It will lie in territory over which the United States has jurisdiction as complete, except in the cities of Colon and Panama, as over its other national domains. It is entitled to protection equally with all others; and far more than most, not on its own account chiefly, but because of its vital consequence to all three coasts, and to their communications. This consequence rests upon its being the only link between them, enabling the United States to concentrate the fleet with the greatest rapidity upon any threatened or desired point. This power, so essential to defense, is no less important to the influence of the country throughout the Pacific Ocean. I say influence, not supremacy, a word which my whole tone of thought rejects. How large a part China, for instance, has played in our international policy of the last decade is easy to recall; nor is there room to deny our interest in her, or her look toward us and toward others

at the present moment. Even in Great Britain, by formal treaty the ally of Japan, and now in entente with Russia, anxiety concerning the future in Korea and Manchuria is shown, and not without cause.

IMPORTANCE OF THE CANAL TO
ANGLO-SAXON INFLUENCE

IN brief conclusion, Sea Power, like other elements of national strength, depends ultimately upon population; upon its numbers and its characteristics. The great effect of the Panama Canal will be the indefinite strengthening of Anglo-Saxon institutions upon the northeast shores of the Pacific, from Alaska to Mexico, by increase of inhabitants and consequent increases of shipping and commerce; to which will contribute that portion of present and future local production which will find cheaper access to the Atlantic by the Canal than by the existing transcontinental or Great Lakes routes. An official of the Canadian Pacific Railway has stated recently, before the London Chamber of Commerce, that even now British manufactures find their way to British Columbia by the Suez Canal; how much more by Panama, when that Canal becomes

available. If manufactures, then, and equally, immigrants; for it is facility of transportation which determines both. The effect, he estimated, would extend inland to the middle of Saskatchewan, seven or eight hundred miles from the Pacific coast; and his plea was for British immigration as well as for British trade, to offset the known inrush from the western part of the United States. Whether American or English, there is increase of European population. This development of the Northeast Pacific will have its correlative in the distant Southwest, in the kindred commonwealths of Australia and New Zealand; the effect of the Canal upon these being not direct, but reflected from the increased political force of communities in sympathy with them on the decisive question of immigration. The result will be to Europeanize these great districts, in the broad sense which recognizes the European derivation of American populations. The Western Pacific will remain Asiatic, as it should,

The question awaiting and approaching solution is the line of demarcation between the Asiatic and European elements in the Pacific. in the Pacific. The considerations advanced appear to indicate that it will be that joining Pacific America with Australia. It is traced roughly through intervening points, of which Hawaii and Samoa are the most conspicuous; but there are outposts of the European and American tenure in positions like the Marshall and Caroline Islands, Guam, Hong-Kong, Kiao Chau, and others, just as there are now European possessions in the Caribbean Sea, in Bermuda, in Halifax, remains of past conditions. The extensive district north of Australia, the islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, New Guinea, and others, while Asiatic in population, are, like India, European in political control. During the period of adjustment, needed for the development of Pacific America and Australasia, naval power, the military representative of Sea Power, will be determinative. The interests herein of Great Britain and of the United States are preponderant and coincident. By force of past history and present possessions the final decision of this momentous question depends chiefly upon them. Meantime, and because of this, the American navy should be second to none but the British.

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