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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



tion of our country to an honored place 

 among the maritime nations of the world 

 after peace has been declared. 



No people living unto itself alone has 

 ever been truly great. Commerce has 

 been the world's greatest civilizing in- 

 fluence, and it has frequently happened 

 that wealth and power and the oppor- 

 tunity to serve mankind have been en- 

 trusted to nations whose territorial do- 

 minions were inconsequent and whose 

 peoples were numerically puny. Their 

 influence was based on the universality of 

 their knowledge of men and climes. 



The Phoenicians, greatest merchants of 

 antiquity, wrote their names large and 

 indelibly in the chronicles of the ages, not 

 through the virtue of their statesmen, 

 not through the courage and strategy of 

 their military captains, not through gifts 

 of art, of religion, or of literature, but 

 because from their ports of Tyre and 

 Sidon they set sail on every sea, bringing 

 the raw riches of mines and forests from 

 the outer fringes of the world to Greece, 

 to Egypt, and to the islands of the Medi- 

 terranean ; because they carried their pur- 

 ples and linens to the princes and poten- 

 tates of Rome, of Sicily, of Carthage, and 

 to mysterious lands, gardens of the Hes- 

 perides, lying beyond the Pillars of Her- 

 cules ; because they were the great dis- 

 seminators of the culture of the East 

 through their superior knowledge of the 

 earth's geography, and because they could 

 sail the trackless sea better than any other 

 race of their time. 



After the Phoenicians, the next coun- 

 try to establish her unquestioned suprem- 

 acy on the seas was the great mother of 

 civilization, Italy, whose mariners car- 

 ried to the ends of the earth the fame of 

 her marvelous city republics, Venice and 

 Genoa. The wealth and power of these 

 great capitals of commerce were founded 

 solely upon ships. Then, as mutual rival- 

 ries undermined their world sway, and 

 the discovery of a water route to the Ear 

 East brought England and western Eu- 

 rope into communication with the Orient, 

 their prestige waned, and gradually there 

 arose in northern Europe that remark- 

 able maritime association known through- 

 out the middle ages as the Hanseatic 

 League — not a nation, but a world power 

 whose units were bound together by com- 

 mon interests of commerce. 



The successive rise and decline of Por- 

 tugal, Spain, and the Dutch Republic, 

 world powers whose supremacy, one 

 after the other, was founded upon mari- 

 time prowess, are familiar to all students 

 of human history. 



CIVILIZATION'S DKBT TO BRITAIN 



Then came the British Empire, the 

 mother of colonies, whose sway upon the 

 Seven Seas has been maintained for more 

 than two centuries. 



British command of the high seas, more 

 than any other instrumentality of modern 

 times, has resulted in the dissemination 

 of light into the dark places of the earth. 

 The Anglo-Saxon has spread his influ- 

 ence on every continent and over the 

 islands of every sea by benevolent assimi- 

 lation of alien peoples. This enduring 

 sway of British influence, maintained by 

 a girdle of commerce-bearing steel ships, 

 furnishes an illuminating contrast to the 

 ephemeral empire of Alexander, held to- 

 gether solely through the force of fear 

 engendered by the Macedonian phalanx. 



A hundred years ago America gave 

 promise of sharing honors with the par-, 

 ent nation, but a combination of circum- 

 stances caused the young Republic of the 

 West to withdraw from enterprises for 

 which her mariners and her wonderful 

 shipbuilders had proved her to be so fit. 



From 1793 to 1842 more than four- 

 fifths of all the imports and exports of 

 the United States were carried in Amer- 

 ican bottoms ; from 1843 to J 862 the pro- 

 portion declined to three-fourths. The 

 next quarter century saw it diminish to 

 one-fourth, and finally to only a little 

 more than one-tenth, from 1887 to 191 3. 



Now, with our shipyards turning out 

 steel ships, wooden ships, and concrete 

 ships, the auguries seem propitious for 

 that not-distant day when, with all the 

 world at peace, the Union Jack and the 

 Stars and Stripes shall float side by side 

 in all the ports on earth and contend in 

 brotherly rivalry for supremacy of speed 

 on every sea. Then will there be an 

 Anglo-Saxon partnership in commercial 

 ventures against which Teutonic aspira- 

 tion can never raise its bruised head in 

 menace. 



In the meantime, to thwart the com- 

 mon enemy of mankind on land, America 

 will continue to build ships, ships, ships ! 



