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Page 54
It is in this respect that the pre-eminent intrinsic advantages of
Cuba, or rather of Spain in Cuba, are to be seen; and also, but in
much less degree, those of Great Britain in Jamaica. Cuba, though
narrow throughout, is over six hundred miles long, from Cape San
Antonio to Cape Maysi. It is, in short, not so much an island as a
continent, susceptible, under proper development, of great
resources--of self-sufficingness. In area it is half as large again as
Ireland, but, owing to its peculiar form, is much more than twice as
long. Marine distances, therefore, are drawn out to an extreme degree.
Its many natural harbors concentrate themselves, to a military
examination, into three principal groups, whose representatives are,
in the west, Havana; in the east, Santiago; while near midway of the
southern shore lies Cienfuegos. The shortest water distance separating
any two of these is 335 miles, from Santiago to Cienfuegos. To get
from Cienfuegos to Havana 450 miles of water must be traversed and the
western point of the island doubled; yet the two ports are distant by
land only a little more than a hundred miles of fairly easy country.
Regarded, therefore, as a base of naval operations, as a source of
supplies to a fleet, Cuba presents a condition wholly unique among the
islands of the Caribbean and of the Gulf of Mexico; to both which it,
and it alone of all the archipelago, belongs. It is unique in its
size, which should render it largely self-supporting, either by its
own products, or by the accumulation of foreign necessaries which
naturally obtains in a large and prosperous maritime community; and it
is unique in that such supplies can be conveyed from one point to the
other, according to the needs of a fleet, by interior lines, not
exposed to risks of maritime capture. The extent of the coast-line,
the numerous harbors, and the many directions from which approach can
be made, minimize the dangers of total blockade, to which all islands
are subject. Such conditions are in themselves advantageous, but they
are especially so to a navy inferior to its adversary, for they convey
the power--subject, of course, to conditions of skill--of shifting
operations from side to side, and finding refuge and supplies in
either direction.
Jamaica, being but one-tenth the size of Cuba, and one-fifth of its
length, does not present the intrinsic advantages of the latter
island, regarded either as a source of supplies or as a centre from
which to direct effort; but when in the hands of a power supreme at
sea, as at the present Great Britain is, the questions of supplies, of
blockade, and of facility in direction of effort diminish in
importance. That which in the one case is a matter of life and death,
becomes now only an embarrassing problem, necessitating watchfulness
and precaution, but by no means insoluble. No advantages of position
can counterbalance, in the long-run, decisive inferiority in organized
mobile force,--inferiority in troops in the field, and yet much more
in ships on the sea. If Spain should become involved in war with Great
Britain, as she so often before has been, the advantage she would have
in Cuba as against Jamaica would be that her communications with the
United States, especially with the Gulf ports, would be well under
cover. By this is not meant that vessels bound to Cuba by such routes
would be in unassailable security; no communications, maritime or
terrestrial, can be so against raiding. What is meant is that they can
be protected with much less effort than they can be attacked; that the
raiders--the offence--must be much more numerous and active than the
defence, because much farther from their base; and that the question
of such raiding would depend consequently upon the force Great Britain
could spare from other scenes of war, for it is not likely that Spain
would fight her single-handed. It is quite possible that under such
conditions advantage of position would more than counterbalance a
_small_ disadvantage in local force. "War," said Napoleon, "is a
business of positions;" by which that master of lightning-like
rapidity of movement assuredly did not mean that it was a business of
getting into a position and sticking there. It is in the utilization
of position by mobile force that war is determined, just as the effect
of a chessman depends upon both its individual value _and_ its
relative position. While, therefore, in the combination of the two
factors, force and position, force is intrinsically the more valuable,
it is always possible that great advantage of position may outweigh
small advantage of force, as 1 + 5 is greater than 2 + 3. The
positional value of Cuba is extremely great.
Regarded solely as a naval position, without reference to the force
thereon based, Jamaica is greatly inferior to Cuba in a question of
general war, notwithstanding the fact that in Kingston it possesses an
excellent harbor and naval station. It is only with direct reference
to the Isthmus, and therefore to the local question of the Caribbean
as the main scene of hostilities, that it possesses a certain
superiority which will be touched on later. It is advisable first to
complete the list, and so far as necessary to account for the
selection, of the other points indicated by the squares.
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