ee ee eee ee ee ee ee eel ke 
NAVAL STATIONS AND NAVAL BASES. 143 
perhaps it has not even quite lost its lead, but it is now balanced by the Pacific * * * 
National policy now imposes naval stations in the Pacific * * * The selected ports, 
however, in both oceans obviously can and should form a well-considered system, in 
which the facilities and endurance of each part shall be proportioned to its relation 
to the whole.” 
It will be noted that the positions which Germany held in the Pacific are now 
held, possibly only for the moment, in other hands, thereby upsetting that balance of 
positions which gave no one country too great a dominance for our own future 
good. We have, to be sure, recognized the singular strategic importance of the 
Hawaiian Islands by half-heartedly providing some of the defenses of Oahu 
Island and Pearl Harbor. Anyone really alive to the actual situation in our Pacific 
possessions must feel grave misgivings as to our future on that ocean. An ounce of 
prevention now is worth several tons in the future if our relations became strained, 
and the remedy lies in intelligent appreciation and conservative but definite action. 
Without going too deeply into an analysis of the strategy of the Pacific, there 
is one thought which we must dismiss from our minds, and that is that we are really 
ever going to allow anyone to tell us to get out of Guam and the Phillipines, or that 
the moral and economic interests of the world at large will be otherwise than defi- 
nitely set back by our doing so. To do so voluntarily is enough like the proposition 
of removing both hands from a sheet of fly paper to make it difficult to appear grace- 
ful in doing so. On the contrary, history will vindicate the acquisition of the Philip- 
pines as an act of broad statesmanship, through which we will eventually solve the 
question of our economic relations with the peoples of the Far East by that exhibition 
of moral and physical purpose which alone satisfies the oriental mind. Soft words 
and evasion of issues get you nowhere in diplomacy, and only intrenched position is 
useful in strategy. 
It is an historical fact that no great naval battle has ever been fought in mid- 
ocean, but always near the bases of one or the other powers, and the ports of supply, 
or naval bases, indicate the direction of the line which operations must take in time 
of war and which become lines of communications once the fleet has advanced be- 
yond any one naval base on the route. We already have in the Pacific the heart’s de- 
sire in strategical positions, and we only seem to lack the knowledge and nerve to 
strengthen such of them as will permit us to take the initiative and thereby fore- 
stall and even prevent war by making it too hopeless for anyone else to take the 
chances. It is a game of checkers, with our advantage against the whole world as 
far as mere positions go. It is clearly in our power to compel the strategy of the Pa- 
cific in time of peace in such a way as to avoid the possibility of war. Pacifists who 
preach disarmament as a means of avoiding war are safe enough on the paid lecture 
circuit, but to be pacific in the Pacific is to be the strong man armed—and there is 
no other way. That we will ever be so armed in the Pacific no one can believe who 
recognizes the potency of local and political interests in absorbing the substance which 
might better go to the maintenance of the two arms of national security, viz., a well- 
