s a navy that can only await attack and defend
its own, leaving the enemy at ease as regards his own interests, and
at liberty to choose his own time and manner of fighting.

It is to be observed also that the most beneficial use of a military
force is not to _wage_ war, however successfully, but to _prevent_
war, with all its suffering, expense, and complication of
embarrassments. Of course, therefore, a navy for defence only, from
which an enemy need fear no harm, is of small account in diplomatic
relations, for it is nearly useless as a deterrent from war. Whatever
there may be in our conditions otherwise to prevent states from
attacking us, a navy "for defence only" will not add to them. For mere
harbor defence, fortifications are decisively superior to ships,
except where peculiar local conditions are found. All our greatest
cities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts can be locally defended better
by forts than by ships; but if, instead of a navy "for defence only,"
there be one so large that the enemy must send a great many ships
across the Atlantic, if he sends any, then the question whether he can
spare so great a number is very serious, considering the ever-critical
condition of European politics. Suppose, for instance, we could put
twenty battleships in commission for war in thirty days, and that we
had threatening trouble with either Germany, France, Great Britain, or
Russia. There is not one of these, except Great Britain, that could
afford to send over here twenty-five battleships, which would be the
very fewest needed, seeing the distance of their operations from
home; while Great Britain, relying wholly on her navy for the
integrity of her empire, equally cannot afford the hostility of a
nation having twenty battleships, and with whom her points of
difference are as inconsequential to her as they are with us.

It should be remembered, too, that any war which may arise with the
naval nations of Europe--or with Japan, which will soon rank with
them--will not be with reference to our own territories, but to our
external relations. In the Monroe doctrine, as now understood and
viewed in the light of the Venezuela incident, with the utterances
then made by our statesmen of all parties, we have on hand one of the
biggest contracts any modern state has undertaken. Nor may we
anticipate from other nations the easy acquiescence of Great Britain.
The way the latter sticks by Canada should warn us that we prevailed
in