144 NAVAL STATIONS AND NAVAL BASES. 
paid and well-trained diplomatic corps and a chain of naval bases for our stay-at- 
home fleet. 
Any consideration of the strategy of the Pacific is utterly futile which leaves out 
the erection of Guam into a great naval base as our key to it for all time—our far- 
flung outpost of “peace in the Pacific” through armed power in repose. Other po- 
sitions which we now own, such as Tutuila (Samoa), Dutch Harbor (Unalaska), 
Sitka, Midway Island, Corregidor, etc., are questions of definite offensive or de- 
fensive areas, or of shortening lines of conimunications, and as such are worthy of 
consideration as strategic points, but our first necessity is the extension of the de- 
fenses of the Panama Canal and Pearl Harbor. Then come Culebra and Guam as 
great insular bases. h 
Meanwhile the other strategical points above enumerated should be treated, for 
the time being, as possible advance bases; their harbors should be cleared of ob- 
structions, and the necessary equipment prepared accordingly. Even Guantanamo 
may be, for the time being, regretfully placed in the advance base class. 
The problems of our national strategy are so vast and yet so light-heartedly dis- 
regarded that it is essential that naval officers and army officers who know the real 
situation should have with them the intelligent understanding and co-operation of 
all intelligent citizens. Half measures give foreign nations a great advantage when 
diplomatic relations are strained, because they compel a temporizing policy at critical 
times, for it is then impossible to do anything in the way of hasty preparation, be- 
cause it will only precipitate war. 
An accompanying chart, similar to that in last year’s Proceedings of this Society, 
shows at a glance the outlines of the problem of our strategy, with the Panama Canal 
in working order. What it would be with the canal blocked is another question. The 
defense of the canal is therefore the prime requisite of our national policy. 
We require naval stations and naval bases to correspond with our policies, with 
our strategy, and with the requirements of our fleet. It means the expenditure of 
millions of dollars and is the price of that empire which is ours by destiny, by geog- 
raphy, and by the blood this nation has already shed, but which empire will surely 
crumble if we sit back. 
That preparation in time of peace can only be called adequate which leaves only 
mobilization as the remaining step in strategy if war unhappily comes. We know 
what our resources and land and sea forces are, and also those of other nations. 
We know what our own and other nations’ policies are. Our strategy must fit what 
we have, and if we have little we can do little. The apparent difference of opinion 
among naval officers as to the needs of the naval establishment, when called upon to 
enumerate them, is largely merely a difference in the values assigned to the various 
elements of sea power and the exigencies of the moment, considering how much our 
strategy lacks in so many directions. At any rate our military and naval establish- 
ments are adequate when they— 
(a) Are superior in matériel and morale to the corresponding forces of a prob- 
able or possible enemy. 
