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Page 28
Few now, of course, would look with composure upon a policy, whatever
its ground, which contemplated the peaceable seclusion of this nation
from its principal lines of commerce. In 1807, however, a great party
accepted the alternative rather than fight, or even than create a
force which might entail war, although more probably it would have
prevented it. But would it be more prudent now to ignore the fact that
we are no longer--however much we may regret it--in a position of
insignificance or isolation, political or geographical, in any way
resembling the times of Jefferson, and that from the changed
conditions may result to us a dilemma similar to that which confronted
him and his supporters? Not only have we grown,--that is a
detail,--but the face of the world is changed, economically and
politically. The sea, now as always the great means of communication
between nations, is traversed with a rapidity and a certainty that
have minimized distances. Events which under former conditions would
have been distant and of small concern, now happen at our doors and
closely affect us. Proximity, as has been noted, is a fruitful source
of political friction, but proximity is the characteristic of the age.
The world has grown smaller. Positions formerly distant have become to
us of vital importance from their nearness. But, while distances have
shortened, they remain for us water distances, and, however short, for
political influence they must be traversed in the last resort by a
navy, the indispensable instrument by which, when emergencies arise,
the nation can project its power beyond its own shore-line.
Whatever seeming justification, therefore, there may have been in the
transient conditions of his own day for Jefferson's dictum concerning
a navy, rested upon a state of things that no longer obtains, and even
then soon passed away. The War of 1812 demonstrated the usefulness of
a navy,--not, indeed, by the admirable but utterly unavailing
single-ship victories that illustrated its course, but by the
prostration into which our seaboard and external communications fell,
through the lack of a navy at all proportionate to the country's needs
and exposure. The navy doubtless reaped honor in that brilliant sea
struggle, but the honor was its own alone; only discredit accrued to
the statesmen who, with such men to serve them, none the less left the
country open to the humiliation of its harried coasts and blasted
commerce. Never was there a more lustrous example of what Jomini calls
"the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them." Except for
the prestige which at last awoke the country to the high efficiency of
the petty force we called our navy, and showed what the sea might be
to us, never was blood spilled more uselessly than in the frigate and
sloop actions of that day. They presented no analogy to the outpost
and reconnoissance fighting, to the detached services, that are not
only inevitable but invaluable, in maintaining the _morale_ of a
military organization in campaign. They were simply scattered efforts,
without relation either to one another or to any main body whatsoever,
capable of affecting seriously the issues of war, or, indeed, to any
plan of operations worthy of the name.
Not very long after the War of 1812, within the space of two
administrations, there came another incident, epoch-making in the
history of our external policy, and of vital bearing on the navy, in
the enunciation of the Monroe doctrine. That pronouncement has been
curiously warped at times from its original scope and purpose. In its
name have been put forth theories so much at odds with the relations
of states, as hitherto understood, that, if they be maintained
seriously, it is desirable in the interests of exact definition that
their supporters advance some other name for them. It is not necessary
to attribute finality to the Monroe doctrine, any more than to any
other political dogma, in order to deprecate the application of the
phrase to propositions that override or transcend it. We should beware
of being misled by names, and especially where such error may induce a
popular belief that a foreign state is outraging wilfully a principle
to the defence of which the country is committed. We have been
committed to the Monroe doctrine itself, not perhaps by any such
formal assumption of obligations as cannot be evaded, but by certain
precedents, and by a general attitude, upon the whole consistently
maintained, from which we cannot recede silently without risk of
national mortification. If seriously challenged, as in Mexico by the
third Napoleon, we should hardly decline to emulate the sentiments so
nobly expressed by the British government, when, in response to the
emperors of Russia and France, it declined to abandon the struggling
Spanish patriots to the government set over them by Napoleon: "To
Spain his Majesty is not bound by any formal instrument; but his
Majesty has, in the face of the world, contracted with that nation
engagements not less sacred, and not less binding upon his Majesty's
mind, than the most solemn treaties." We may have to accept also
certain corollaries which may appear naturally to result from the
Monroe doctrine, but we are by no means committed to some propositions
which lately have been tallied with its name. Those propositions
possibly embody a sound policy, more applicable to present conditions
than the Monroe doctrine itself, and therefore destined to succeed it;
but they are not the same thing. There is, however, something in
common between it and them. Reduced to its barest statement, and
stripped of all deductions, natural or forced, the Monroe doctrine, if
it were not a mere political abstraction, formulated an idea to which
in the last resort effect could be given only through the
instrumentality of a navy; for the gist of it, the kernel of the
truth, was that the country had at that time distant interests on the
land, political interests of a high order in the destiny of foreign
territory, of which a distinguishing characteristic was that they
could be assured only by sea.
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