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Page 52
It may be well, though possibly needless, to ask readers to keep
clearly in mind that the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, while
knit together like the Siamese twins, are distinct geographical
entities. A leading British periodical once accused the writer of
calling the Gulf of Mexico the Caribbean Sea, because of his
unwillingness to admit the name of any other state in connection with
a body of water over which his own country claimed predominance. The
Gulf of Mexico is very clearly defined by the projection, from the
north, of the peninsula of Florida, and from the south, of that of
Yucatan. Between the two the island of Cuba interposes for a distance
of two hundred miles, leaving on one side a passage of nearly a
hundred miles wide--the Strait of Florida--into the Atlantic, while on
the other, the Yucatan Channel, somewhat broader, leads into the
Caribbean Sea. It may be mentioned here, as an important military
consideration, that from the mouth of the Mississippi westward to Cape
Catoche--the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula--there is no harbor that can
be considered at all satisfactory for ships of war of the larger
classes. The existence of many such harbors in other parts of the
regions now under consideration practically eliminates this long
stretch of coast, regarded as a factor of military importance in the
problem before us.
In each of these sheets of water, the Gulf of Mexico and the
Caribbean, there is one position of pre-eminent commercial importance.
In the Gulf the mouth of the Mississippi is the point where meet all
the exports and imports, by water, of the Mississippi Valley. However
diverse the directions from which they come, or the destinations to
which they proceed, all come together here as at a great crossroads,
or as the highways of an empire converge on the metropolis. Whatever
value the Mississippi and the myriad miles of its subsidiary
water-courses represent to the United States, as a facile means of
communication from the remote interior to the ocean highways of the
world, all centres here at the mouth of the river. The existence of
the smaller though important cities of the Gulf coast--Mobile,
Galveston, or the Mexican ports--does not diminish, but rather
emphasizes by contrast, the importance of the Mississippi entrance.
They all share its fortunes, in that all alike communicate with the
outside world through the Strait of Florida or the Yucatan Channel.
In the Caribbean, likewise, the existence of numerous important ports,
and a busy traffic in tropical produce grown within the region itself,
do but make more striking the predominance in interest of that one
position known comprehensively, but up to the present somewhat
indeterminately, as the Isthmus. Here again the element of decisive
value is the crossing of the roads, the meeting of the ways, which,
whether imposed by nature itself, as in the cases before us, or
induced, as sometimes happens, in a less degree, by simple human
dispositions, are prime factors in mercantile or strategic
consequence. For these reasons the Isthmus, even under the
disadvantages of land carriage and transshipment of goods, has ever
been an important link in the communications from East to West, from
the days of the first discoverers and throughout all subsequent
centuries, though fluctuating in degree from age to age; but when it
shall be pierced by a canal, it will present a maritime centre
analogous to the mouth of the Mississippi. They will differ in this,
that in the latter case the converging water routes on one side are
interior to a great state whose resources they bear, whereas the roads
which on either side converge upon the Isthmus lie wholly upon the
ocean, the common possession of all nations. Control of the latter,
therefore, rests either upon local control of the Isthmus itself, or,
indirectly, upon control of its approaches, or upon a distinctly
preponderant navy. In naval questions the latter is always the
dominant factor, exactly as on land the mobile army--the army in the
field--must dominate the question of fortresses, unless war is to be
impotent.
We have thus the two centres round which revolve all the military study
of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. The two sheets of water,
taken together, control or affect the approaches on one side to these
two supreme centres of commercial, and therefore of political and
military, interest. The approaches on the other side--the interior
communications of the Mississippi, that is, or the maritime routes
in the Pacific converging upon the Isthmus--do not here concern us.
These approaches, in terms of military art, are known as the
"communications." Communications are probably the most vital and
determining element in strategy, military or naval. They are literally
the most radical; for all military operations depend upon communications,
as the fruit of a plant depends upon communication with its root. We
draw therefore upon the map the chief lines by which communication
exists between these two centres and the outside world. Such lines
represent the mutual dependence of the centres and the exterior, by
which each ministers to the others, and by severance of which either
becomes useless to the others. It is from their potential effect upon
these lines of communication that all positions in the Gulf or the
Caribbean derive their military value, or want of value.
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