108 THE MAINTENANCE OF THE FLEET. 



clever enough to avoid the discomfort, the loss of time, and the interference with 

 his pleasure and business which universal military service demands. As Rudyard 

 Kipling recently said, we expect to raise armies "by the same methods we raise 

 money at a charity bazaar. We profess to believe that in the hour of danger there 

 will always be enough men ready, of their own free will, to defend the country." 

 The voluntary system, however comfortable to the millions, is enormously expen- 

 sive, unfair, clumsy, unreliable, and generally unsatisfactory. Drafting by lot in 

 times of stress is only a palliative, as shown by the disgraceful draft riots during 

 the Civil War. In countries in which there is conscription there are at 

 least no strikes in government munitions factories and shipyards, and no real agi- 

 tation for woman suffrage, for the right to vote implies the obligation to bear arms 

 or to manufacture them. One must either fish or cut bait. 



However, we all get, in the end, what we deserve, and, when the final reckon- 

 ing is paid in the war now going on in the world, we may even be able to estimate 

 accurately the relative cost of being, say loo per cent ready for war as compared 

 with 30 per cent; and we may even find ourselves, somehow, helping to pay the 

 piper. Whatever legitimate differences of opinion, therefore, we may have as to 

 our national policies as a world power, it would seem to be best, instead of dis- 

 cussing the subject of the maintenance of the fleet on the high plane of patriotic 

 or civic duty, to apply the acid test of business, or what pays best in the end. 



In the first place, geography has placed a large ocean on either side of us, be- 

 tween us and our powerful neighbors. Looking across the Atlantic, we have al- 

 ways accepted a defensive role, and talked, and thought, and built to repel an 

 enemy if he should come. This habit of thought, of waiting for something, of 

 holding back, of expecting things to come to us, has almost destroyed our initiative, 

 has kept back our foreign trade, and almost driven our flag from the ocean. We 

 have reasoned that our fleet would give us time to bring up our supposed reserves 

 and enable us to raise an army of volunteers. Facing this comfortable solution, 

 we have turned our back upon the Pacific. 



Geography, acquisitiveness or destiny has presented us in the Pacific with 

 Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Tutuila (Samoa), Midway Island, and Guam, as 

 stepping stones across the Pacific, and, by their possession, imposed upon us the 

 same policy as if they were actually in the hands of an enemy or rival, because 

 they exist and cannot be sunk; and if we fail to make the right use of them 

 geography will turn them against us, just as it turned them away from others and 

 to us. The Pacific permits to us no defensive policy such as we have softened 

 ourselves to in the Atlantic. Our coast line extends to Guam, even if we should 

 scuttle in the Philippines. We can wiggle, and squirm, and make a wry face over 

 paying the bill, but we can never evade ultimately the cost of adequately fortifying 

 a naval base in the island of Guam, and in a lesser degree in the island of Tutuila, 

 in the Archipelago of Alaska, and on Midway Island, just as we have already 

 begun the good work in the Hawaiian Islands and at Balboa at the Pacific end of 

 the Panama Canal, the reason being, if there were no other, to prevent their being 



