I
All sea power is divided in three parts, one ashore, another afloat, and the third in human understanding and direction. In other words, the basic elements that bring about sea power are of the land; they tend to express themselves on the seas and overseas; and such expression is profoundly influenced by the measure of understanding and direction given to advancing or retarding the tendency of the ashore factors to express themselves afloat.
It is not to be expected that the general public realize that the elements causing sea power are such seemingly unnautical matters as the geographic position of a country, its physical conformation and extent, and the numbers and character of its people—and that of their government. Such factors are primarily and almost wholly of the land. Nor need one understand seamanship, navigation, overseas traffic, and the intricacies of naval operations, and of their potentialities in influencing statecraft, in order to appreciate that a country virtually surrounded by oceans, producing more goods than it consumes and requiring increasing imports of crude materials and foodstuffs, will be obliged to traffic overseas—and should be intelligent enough to safeguard a traffic it is economically obliged to conduct.
On the other hand, those conducting afloat the maritime results of such natural, sociological, economic and political causes ashore should be expected to understand the land foundations upon which their seafaring activities rest and to the service of which their lives are devoted. And even more, public officials who assume to direct the shipping and naval conduct of a nation might well be expected to understand at least the elements of the science of sea power, ashore and afloat—a science that some evidently do not know is quite as broad and as basic as that of political economy.
But a study of the elements of sea power, of their interrelations and of their profound influences on human happiness, brings a realization that the mid-oceanic position of America, with all of our relations with other parts of the world immutably overseas affairs, is by far the best from which to carry on world-wide seafaring. For nowhere else is there a single country with the conjunction of such a central maritime position, such natural resources, such extent of territory, and so numerous a population. And furthermore, with respect to the character of a people, Mahan said:
The tendency to trade, involving of necessity the production of something to trade with, is the national characteristic most important to the development of sea power.
When we realize that our economic productivity about equals that of all the nations of Europe west of Russia on the one hand, and that of all other parts of the world, on the other, we get some sense of the colossal economic force here pressing to express itself in overseas trade. There is nothing surprising, therefore, in the fact that our external trade is already as world-wide and as great as that of any other single country. Indeed, our exports are already over 25 per cent greater than those from any other one nation and their production is said to support directly about a tenth of our population.
Sea-borne exports and imports to and from all parts of the world amounting to over eight billion dollars a year, and a coastwise trade carrying some six billion more, give us a sea-borne commerce that already exceeds fourteen billion dollars and is vitally important to every industry and home and person in the land. Naturally, such an unprecedented salt-water traffic requires great shipping facilities. And with competition for markets and for supplies becoming ever keener, the transport of merely a third of our trans-oceanic traffic has led to regular lines of American shipping reaching from our mid-oceanic base to all parts of the world over different lanes that total more than a hundred and fifty thousand miles in length and that require naval protection.
In short, the sequence in sea power is economic production ashore, then overseas trading, then more and more ships to carry it, and finally naval power supported politically by the internal economic interests that are expressing themselves externally in overseas trade and financially, in effect, by a fraction of the profit of that trade to the country.
II
It has been exceedingly interesting to note the rapidity with which a realization of such interests, and of their interrelations, has grown since the Washington Conference of 1921-22, first in the press and among business people, then more generally, and, latterly, in Congress. This growth is concretely illustrated by the accompanying map, and its insert, showing how Congress has responded to public pressure for support of the Navy in spite of repeated efforts on the part of former President Coolidge, torn between his beloved budget and his growing appreciation of sea power, to substitute paper programs for realities.
Another and equally interesting development has been the subsidence of talk merely about “coast defense” in Congressional debates on the Navy, while more and more appreciation of our world-wide economic interests, and of their safeguarding, is there expressed.
As all of this is the result of nation-wide economic and political pressure upon Congress from below, and in spite of the then President’s striving to lead actually in the opposite direction, and as our overseas trading interests and consequent shipping are growing, it seems logical to consider the trend as well established on an increasingly strong politico-economic basis that will deal even more summarily with any future administration evidently opposing this trend than Congress dealt with Coolidge. But the point that it is desired to emphasize here is that, at last, Congress has realized that the function of a navy is to be adequate to safeguard our world-wide trade and shipping at all times because our home prosperity has become vitally dependent on our trade abroad.
III
From the outbreak of the late war in Europe, Allied propaganda disseminated here the allegation that it was Germany’s heavy armament that brought on that war —and the spawn of that allegation is the present-day pacifist generalization that “armaments cause wars.” Granted that an occasional policeman runs amuck, should one generalize that “police cause crimes” and that we should, therefore, disarm the law in order to reduce crime!
On the other hand, some realize that the lack of armaments, or military power, lead to assaults upon the integrity of a country or to a nation’s being unnecessarily drawn into war. China is an example of such assaults and the United States furnishes the recent outstanding example of a nation’s lack of adequate armaments resulting in its being drawn unnecessarily into a war. For in the Foreword to his Intimate Papers, the great Wilsonian apostle, Colonel House, says of the late war: “…I was sure, given a large and efficient Army and Navy, the United States would have become the arbiter of peace, and probably without the loss of a single life.” Well meant but none the less misguided pacifist abhorrence of all things martial unquestionably prevented the United States from starting in, on the outbreak of the war in Europe, to prepare to safeguard our interests and to be the arbiter of peace by becoming manifestly adequately armed to bring about the defeat of either belligerent by joining with its antagonist. Thus both groups of belligerents would have respected our interests and would have been constrained to submit to the peace-compelling potentialities of our armaments—and we would not have had to go to war. Is it not proper, therefore, to charge all our needless waste of life and money in the European war to the colossal mistake made by pacifist prevention of our developing adequate armaments to save us from having to go to war?
Such a peaceful use of naval power is given, in broader terms, by Captain Dudley W. Knox, U. S. Navy (Retired), in The United States Naval Institute Proceedings for last June, where he says, respecting the British:
Their doctrine of a supreme navy, not to make war but to preserve peace, not to be predatory but to shield the free development of commerce, not to unsettle the world but to stabilize it through the promotion of law and order, has been demonstrated as sound. Britain has given us outstanding proof of the fallacy that armaments are necessarily provocative of war. For virtually one hundred years, while possessing much the strongest navy in the world, her government kept free from major wars and used her dominant naval power primarily as a commercial shield, in accordance with the doctrine of “trade protection” so wisely propagated. On many critical occasions during this period the mere strength of the Royal Navy was sufficient to deter other nations from undertaking war against her.
In other words, the main purpose of an adequate navy is somewhat like that of a competent policeman: to deter would-be criminals from breaking the peace by his manifest capacity to force them into subjugation to the rule of peace—wherefore the policeman, in some communities, is called the “peace officer” because he maintains peace—by force of arms if need be. And, in passing, it may be said that for a country circumstanced geographically and economically as is the United States ever to be drawn into war connotes the failure of its leaders to recognize and to secure the conditions essential to the maintenance of predetermined policies and to the safeguarding of established interests peacefully.
The maintenance of internal and external peace in the United States is a far broader problem than some seem to realize. For the economic life of our people has become critically dependent on imports of essential crude materials and foodstuffs from virtually all parts of the world, and upon exports of our surplus production to equally far-flung markets. So that while our own political frontiers, and those of our non-contiguous territories, are comparatively limited in extent, our economic frontiers are world-wide. For instance, about a quarter of our essential imports of crude materials come from within a thousand-mile radius of Singapore. If they were to be interrupted at their source many of our principal industries would collapse, with dire internal social as well as economic results. Consequently our economic defense problem involves assuring adequate flow of trade with such remote regions at all times.
IV
Bearing in mind the world-wide economic problem just mentioned let us consider in outline the series of tasks that would confront our Navy if, as is usual, political ignorance and parsimony have kept it below the strength necessary to maintain peace. Then the first task of our forces would be to keep as much of the war as possible as remote as possible from our vital centers, shores, and lines of communication—all of which would be mainly a matter of trans-oceanic naval operations. Thereafter would come the next task, that of forcing the enemy to stop fighting. This would not be done by merely shooing him off from our shores for a while by “coast defense,” but rather by organizing a trans-oceanic counter-offensive sufficiently strong to force him to stop fighting, as was done in the late war in Europe where a successful naval counter-offensive against his submarines made it practicable to transport to France sufficient army forces to stem the enemy’s offensive operations there and then overwhelm him by a counter-offensive ashore.
But as all such operations from our mid-oceanic position must, of necessity, be primarily trans-oceanic naval operations, it helps to have in mind even the merest skeleton outline of the major elements in naval operations.
Whether by sea, land or air, the object of all warlike operations is to bring about such conditions in the enemy’s country that he will cease from seeking the ends for which he went to war or will yield those for which war was inaugurated against him; and at the same time one attempts to parry such efforts of the enemy against one’s own country. But naval operations proper are virtually restricted to sea areas. So they seek to produce such results in the enemy’s country, in the main, by depriving him of the use of the sea as a channel for his combatant and commercial movements, and of neutral sea-borne support, while assuring as extensive use of sea communications as may be needed for one’s own maritime transportation of all kinds.
Such exercise of what is technically known as the “control” of military and mercantile transportation by sea is the ultimate naval operation toward the success of which virtually all others look. It is carried out nowadays, in the main, by battle cruisers, heavy and light cruisers, submarines, and aircraft, conducting dispersed cruising warfare. And while “control” operations include protecting commercial and military shipping, their main mission is to locate and stop enemy shipping and neutral shipping carrying contraband—a task in which airplanes, operating from naval vessels, can be exceedingly helpful by making high-speed flights of a few hundred miles and thus greatly extending the sea area over which each warship can exercise effective “control.”
It should be realized, however, that aircraft alone could not fulfill such humanitarian requirements before sinking a ship as even submarines can. Furthermore, the radii of operation in the trans-oceanic undertakings with which we are concerned are far beyond the serviceable limits of aircraft, obliging the latter to be carried to the approximate scene of activities and there supported by naval vessels. And however great a part aircraft come to play, their main aim at sea will continue to be the “control” of sea-borne traffic because ships unquestionably will remain the principal means of carriage over the seas—for it would take about 4,000,000 trips a year of the largest airships now practicable to conduct the overseas commerce now transported for us by surface vessels in less than 10,000 trips.
Cruising “control” operations logically will seek to deprive the enemy of the use of whatever sea area may be most essential to his purposes—will strike at the root where his sea communications concentrate rather than snip at far-flung twigs. But the enemy’s aim will be to defend an area so vital to him by a concentration of his naval power in the form of a battle fleet so based as to “command” his critical area in order to debar dispersed cruising vessels from effectively controlling traffic in it. Consequently, the enemy’s battle fleet must be overcome—or contained near its base by the continued presence, in his critical area, of an obviously superior battle fleet of one’s own—before the ultimate “control” operations of patrolling the enemy’s critical area and blockading his access to the sea can be carried out with maximum disastrous effect upon the military, economic, social and political conditions ashore in his country.
Conclusive naval operations therefore call for three elements: a base so located that the fleet can maintain superior force in the enemy’s critical area; a concentrated and preponderant battle fleet of capital ships and their auxiliary vessels and aircraft of all types, the task of which is to secure “command” of the enemy’s critical area so that the “control force” can operate effectively therein; and in addition, a dispersed cruising “control force,” consisting principally of cruisers, submarines, and aircraft, the task of which is to exercise conclusive “control” over all kinds of maritime transportation, in the critical sea area most important to the enemy, as well as elsewhere.
In other words, except for effecting an invasive landing, the ultimate aim of all fighting between naval vessels is in order to exercise control over enemy and neutral sea-borne traffic. From this it follows that any move toward the so-called “freedom of the seas,” or other reduction of naval efficacy, handicaps this comparatively bloodless form of quasi-economic warfare afloat and consequently conduces to the more bloody invasive operations ashore by a belligerent having the will to win.
V
Recent international discussions warrant further consideration of the capital fleet and of the dispersed cruising control force.
The first task of the capital fleet is to prevent an enemy from securing command of one’s critical area so that thereupon enemy cruising forces can exercise effective control over traffic in it; and the next task of the capital fleet is to secure command of the enemy’s critical area so that one’s own cruising forces can exercise such control over it as to most injure conditions in the enemy’s country. In passing it may be well to recall that certain extensive problems as to possible tasks of the American capital fleet seem to have led to perhaps a disproportionate concentration thereon to the neglect of the concomitant and ultimate problem of exercising defensive and offensive control over sea-borne traffic simultaneously in widely separated oceanic regions.
As has been previously implied, the capital fleet consists (a) of a battle force of capital ships to be used in concentration together as a heavy striking force and (b) of such auxiliaries to them as cruisers, destroyers, submarines and aircraft to act as scouts and defensive screens, for the capital ships, on the surface, under the surface and in the air, and occasionally as auxiliary offensive weapons; and, of course, each type of such auxiliaries, and each unit of each type, should be competent to perform its strategic and tactical tasks.
As the capital ships of the battle force may be considered as designed to act in concentrated conjunction with each other, their aggregate tonnage may be taken as a fair measure of their collective, or relative, power if all units are competent to perform such strategic and tactical tasks as may be required. On the other hand, even in the capital fleet, the efficacy of scouting and screening operations by all types of auxiliaries depends, to a considerable extent, on there being a sufficient number of these to disperse to quite widely separated positions, each unit, of course, being individually appropriate to and competent for its tasks. From this it seems to follow that, while aggregate tonnage may be a fair measure of a capital battle force, the criterion as to auxiliaries is whether there are sufficient numbers of them, each competent, for distribution as scouting and screening operations may require.
This is illustrated in a practical way by the fact that the formula for cruisers with the battle force that Admiral Lord Jellicoe gave at the Geneva Conference of 1927 was not, say, 45,000 tons of battle-fleet cruisers for every 100,000 tons of capital ships, but five cruisers for every three capital ships. In passing it is noteworthy that the British battle force of twenty capital ships thus calls for thirty battle-fleet cruisers whereas, worked out by an entirely different method based on positions, the American battle force of eighteen capital ships calls for twenty-eight cruisers attached to it-—a closer check than is usually reached in Anglo-American naval problems.
But, in addition to the capital fleet and all such auxiliaries integral to it, we had to consider the dispersed cruising control force with tasks as widely separated as the oceans and the hemispheres. In the control force much more than in the capital fleet the problem is to have enough cruisers, or other craft of adequate individual capabilities, to distribute to many widely separated points where defensive or offensive control operations must be carried out. For such tasks a fleet of, say, forty cruisers of 7,000 tons each, aggregating 280,000 tons, would be far more effective, if supported by many bases to compensate for relatively limited steaming radius, than would be a similarly armed fleet of only twenty-eight cruisers of 10,000 tons each; for the forty cruisers could be in nearly 43 per cent more positions than could the twenty-eight.
VI
Turning to a specific phase of this, it is very interesting to note that the British fleet of modern cruisers built, building and publicly authorized, consists of forty that mount 6-inch guns and twenty-seven that mount 7.5 and 8-inch guns, or a total of sixty-seven vessels, whereas the United States has ten 6-inch gunners and is building or has authorized twenty-three that will carry 8-inch guns—a total of but thirty-three modern cruisers, only the ten smaller of which are completed. If we segregate thirty British cruisers, according to the Jellicoe formula, to their capital fleet, they would have thirty-seven left for defensive and offensive dispersed cruising control tasks whereas segregating twenty-eight cruisers to the American capital fleet would leave only five American cruisers for corresponding control tasks—when all American cruisers now authorized by Congress are completed.
Setting aside the capital fleets, this means, in terms of naval control operations, that there would be thirty-seven British cruisers available to protect British sea-borne trade, and to destroy that of the United States, whereas there would be only five American cruisers to (nominally) protect our trade— to say nothing of offensive operations. When it is recalled that the sea-borne commerce of the United States is just as world-wide and considerably greater than that of the United Kingdom or that of the British Empire, there seems to be a lack of balance in their having over seven times as many cruisers, as well as many more bases, for the protection of their trade than we have for the safeguarding of ours. And inevitably such a merely nominally guarded trade as ours would be swept from the seas overnight by their regular cruisers plus their similar preponderance of fast, armable merchant ships, whereas we would be virtually impotent defensively and totally incapable of inaugurating those offensive control operations essential to victory.
VII
We are told, however, that, because of expense, every step possible must be taken toward naval reduction.
An official of very high political position, but one new to naval problems, emphasizes a possible building program of $1,170,000,000, while subordinating the fact that such a contingent expenditure would be spread over fifteen years. But $1,170,000,000 spread over fifteen years gives an average of only $78,000,000 a year—hardly a staggering amount to a government that enjoys annual surpluses reckoned by the hundred million. And when we recall that the present annual, income of the people of the United States is about $90,000,000,000 and undoubtedly will average over $100,000,000,000 during the next fifteen years, the expenditure of $78,000,000—or 78 cents out of every $1,000 of income—is not an alarmingly heavy premium to pay to assure the safety, peace and prosperity of the United States.
The present-day money value of our naval vessels amounts to about $1,200,000,000 and that to replace them systematically, year by year, once in every twenty years, would call normally for an average annual expenditure of $60,000,000. So the conjured terrors of a contingent program calling for $1,700,000,000 (in fifteen years) wash down to a possible increase of merely $18,000,000 a year over normal replacements.
In contrast to such statements let us look at the cost of all armaments to the people of the United States in comparison with their other expenditures for government.
In 1927 the cost of the United States Army and Navy including non-military activities was $679,000,000, although in 1903 it had been only $228,000,000. But according to a recent publication by the National Industrial Conference Board, in 1903 the total expenditures of our federal, state and local governments amounted to $1,570,000,000, or 7.7 per cent of our then national income, while by 1927 our cost of government had increased to $12,000,000,000 and was taking 15.8 per cent of our national income. This means, in terms of present-day money, that while our disbursements for arms rose from $4.00 to nearly $6.00 per capita—largely because of more expensive mechanical equipment—we allowed our other governmental expenditures to multiply more than threefold, from about $30 to almost $94 a head, an increase of nearly $64.
It is noteworthy that the relative cost of our martial establishment has dropped from 14.5 per cent of our governmental outlay in 1903 to only 5.8 per cent of what we spent in 1927 for government. But it is far more interesting to find that the net increase for civilian purposes is almost $64 per capita— and that this net increase for civilian government alone is nearly eleven times as great as our total current costs for armaments. Government expenditures that amount to $100 per capita and take 16 per cent of our income may well be considered onerous. But common sense suggests reducing materially the $94 we lavish on civilian government before we worry over much about the reduction of the $6.00 we spend on national defense to assure our peace with nations abroad and our consequent economic prosperity at home.
But there are considerations far more important to us than the costs of armaments. America is, in effect, a great mid-oceanic island with all of our relations with all other parts of the world trans-oceanic and, of necessity, involving the conduct and control of overseas communications of all kinds— that is, sea power. In our broad base we have developed productivity to the point that already our overseas trade is as great and as world-wide as that of any other single country. Our prosperity at home has become intimately dependent on our trade abroad. And we have at our command, on a scale heretofore unprecedented in the world, all the elements that produce sea power, except what Mahan called “intelligent governmental direction.”
Foreigners more sophisticated than we are, seeing this, and realizing the determinative role that sea power plays in national prosperity and in international relations, have naturally sought to curb our almost automatic expression on the seas, and consequent influence overseas. But we should realize that as we have in incomparable measure all the elements of sea power—except understanding—and as our great prosperity at home and influence abroad depend on sea power, any move that reduces the effectiveness of any expression or factor of sea power will handicap the United States more than it will any other country and consequently will be counter to the ultimate interests of our country.