Page 52 - The Interest of America in Sea Power Present and Future

Hawaii and our Future Sea Power. ;
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selves confronted with unexpected causes of
dissension, conflicts of interests, whose results
may be, on the one hand, war, or, on the other,
abandonment of clear and imperative national
advantage in order to avoid an issue for which
preparation has not been made. By no pre-
meditated contrivance of our own, by the co-
operation of a series of events which, however
dependent step by step upon human action,
were not intended to prepare the present crisis,
the United States finds herself compelled to
answer a question — to make a decision — not
unlike and not less momentous than that re-
quired of the Roman senate, when the Mamer-
tine garrison invited it to occupy Messina, and
so to abandon the hitherto traditional policy
which had confined the expansion of Rome to
the Italian peninsula. For let it not be over-
looked that, whether we wish or no, we must
answer the question, we must make the de-
cision. The issue cannot be dodged. Absolute
inaction in such a case is a decision as truly as
the most vehement action. We can now ad-
vance, but, the conditions of the world being
what they are, if we do not advance we recede
for there is involved not so much a particular
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