from her
the control of the sea. No modern state has long maintained a
supremacy by land and by sea,--one or the other has been held from
time to time by this or that country, but not both. Great Britain
wisely has chosen naval power; and, independent of her reluctance to
break with the United States for other reasons, she certainly would
regret to devote to the invasion of a nation of seventy millions the
small disposable force which she maintains in excess of the constant
requirements of her colonial interests. We are, it may be repeated, an
insular power, dependent therefore upon a navy.

Durable naval power, besides, depends ultimately upon extensive
commercial relations; consequently, and especially in an insular
state, it is rarely aggressive, in the military sense. Its instincts
are naturally for peace, because it has so much at stake outside its
shores. Historically, this has been the case with the conspicuous
example of sea power, Great Britain, since she became such; and it
increasingly tends to be so. It is also our own case, and to a yet
greater degree, because, with an immense compact territory, there has
not been the disposition to external effort which has carried the
British flag all over the globe, seeking to earn by foreign commerce
and distant settlement that abundance of resource which to us has been
the free gift of nature--or of Providence. By her very success,
however, Great Britain, in the vast increase and dispersion of her
external interests, has given hostages to fortune, which for mere
defence impose upon her a great navy. Our career has been different,
our conditions now are not identical, yet our geographical position
and political convictions have created for us also external interests
and external responsibilities, which are likewise our hostages to
fortune. It is not necessary to roam afar in search of adventures;
popular feeling and the deliberate judgment of statesmen alike have
asserted that, from conditions we neither made nor control, interests
beyond the sea exist, have sprung up of themselves, which demand
protection. "Beyond the sea"--that means a navy. Of invasion, in any
real sense of the word, we run no risk, and if we did, it must be by
sea; and there, at sea, must be met primarily, and ought to be met
decisively, any attempt at invasion of our interests, either in
distant lands, or at home by blockade or by bombardment. Yet the force
of men in the navy is smaller, by more t