Mahan on naval warfare : $b Selections from the writing of Rear Admiral Alfred T. MahanMahan, A. T. (Alfred Thayer)
History
Mahan on naval warfare : $b Selections from the writing of Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan
Mahan, A. T. (Alfred Thayer)
Naval art and science; Naval strategy; Sea-power
If with wealth, numbers and opportunity, a people still cannot so
organize their strength as to hold their own, it is not practical to
expect that those to whom wealth and opportunity are lacking, but who
have organizing faculty and willingness to fight, will not under the
pressure of need enter upon an inheritance which need will persuade
themselves is ethically their due. What, it may be asked, is likely to
be the reasoning of an intelligent Chinese or Japanese workman,
realizing the relative opportunities of his crowded country and those of
Australia and California, and finding himself excluded by force? What
ethical, what moral, value will he find in the contention that his
people should not resort to force to claim a share in the better
conditions from which force bars him? How did the white races respect
the policy of isolation in Japan and China, though it only affected
commercial advantages? I do not in the least pronounce upon the ethical
propriety of exclusion by those in possession—the right of property, now
largely challenged. I merely draw attention to the apparent balance of
ethical argument, with the fact of antagonistic economical conditions;
and I say that for such a situation the only practical arbiter is the
physical force, of which war is merely the occasional political
expression.
In the broad outlook, which embraces not merely armed collision, but the
condition of preparation and attitude of mind that enable a people to
put forth, on demand, the full measure of their physical
strength,—numerical, financial and military,—to repel a threatened
injury or maintain a national right, war is the regulator and adjuster
of those movements of the peoples, which in their tendencies and outcome
constitute history. These are natural forces, which from their origin
and power are self-existent and independent in relation to man. His
provision against them is war; the artificial organization of other
forces, intrinsically less powerful materially, but with the advantage
which intelligent combination and direction confer. By this he can
measurably control, guide, delay, or otherwise beneficially modify,
results which threaten to be disastrous in their extent, tendency, or
suddenness. So regarded war is remedial or preventive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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