althy, is she so in
proportion to her exposure. That Japan at four thousand miles distance
has a population of over three hundred to the square mile, while our
three great Pacific States average less than twenty, is a portentous
fact. The immense aggregate numbers resident elsewhere in the
United States cannot be transfered thither to meet an emergency, nor
contribute effectively to remedy this insufficiency; neither can a
land force on the defensive protect, if the way of the sea is open.
In such opposition of smaller numbers against larger, nowhere do
organisation and development count as much as in navies. Nowhere so
well as on the sea can a general numerical inferiority be compensated
by specific numerical superiority, resulting from the correspondence
between the force employed and the nature of the ground. It follows
strictly, by logic and by inference, that by no other means can safety
be insured as economically and as efficiently. Indeed, in matters of
national security, economy and efficiency are equivalent terms. The
question of the Pacific is probably the greatest world problem of
the twentieth century, in which no great country is so largely and
directly interested as is the United States. For the reason given it
is essentially a naval question, the third in which the United States
finds its well-being staked upon naval adequacy.

CHAPTER I

THE NAVAL CAMPAIGN ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 1775-1776

At the time when hostilities began between Great Britain and her
American Colonies, the fact was realised generally, being evident to
reason and taught by experience, that control of the water, both ocean
and inland, would have a preponderant effect upon the contest. It was
clear to reason, for there was a long seaboard with numerous interior
navigable watercourses, and at the same time scanty and indifferent
communications by land. Critical portions of the territory involved
were yet an unimproved wilderness. Experience, the rude but efficient
schoolmaster of that large portion of mankind which gains knowledge
only by hard knocks, had confirmed through the preceding French wars
the inferences of the thoughtful. Therefore, conscious of the great
superiority of the British Navy, which, however, had not then attained
the unchallenged supremacy of a later day, the American leaders early
sought the alliance of the Bourbon kingdoms, France and Spain, the
hereditary enemies of Great Britain. There alone could be found