Britain, she could now, if she
desired, take them without trouble, so far as our navy is concerned;
so could France; so possibly, five years hence, could Japan. That is,
under our present conditions of naval weakness, either France or Great
Britain could spare ships enough to overcome our force, without
fatally crippling her European fleet; whereas, were our navy half the
size of the British, she could not afford to send half her fleet so
far away from home; nor, if we had half ours in the Pacific and half
in the Atlantic, could she afford to send one-third or one-fourth of
her entire navy so far from her greater interests, independent of the
fact that, even if victorious, it would be very badly used before our
force was defeated. Hawaii is not worth that to Great Britain; whereas
it is of so much consequence to us that, even if lost, it would
probably be returned at a peace, as Martinique and Guadeloupe
invariably have been to France. Great Britain would not find its value
equivalent to our resentment at her holding it. Now the argument as to
the British fleet is still stronger as to France, for she is as
distant as Great Britain and has a smaller navy. The argument is
different as regards Japan, for she is nearer by far than they, only
half as far again as we, and that power has recently given us an
intimation which, if we disregard, we do so in face of the facts. Her
remonstrance about the annexation of Hawaii, however far it went, gave
us fair warning that a great naval state was about to come into being
in the Pacific, prepared to watch, and perhaps to contest, our action
in what we thought our interests demanded. From that instant the navy
of Japan becomes a standard, showing, whether we annex the islands or
not, a minimum beneath which our Pacific fleet cannot be allowed to
fall, without becoming a "navy for defence only," in the very worst
sense.

This brief train of reasoning will suggest why it is not necessary to
have a navy equal to the greatest, in order to insure that sense of
fear which deters a rival from war, or handicaps his action in war.
The biggest navy that ever existed cannot all be sent on one mission,
in any probable state of the political world. A much smaller force,
favorably placed, produces an effect far beyond its proportionate
numbers; for, to quote again Napoleon's phrase, "War is a business of
positions." This idea is by no means new, even to unprofessional men;
on the contrary, it is s