Page 100 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

The Isthmus and Sea Power. 81

and from them to the outer world ; while the
capital and shipping employed in this traffic
were protected by a powerful navy, which,
except on very rare occasions, was fully com-
petent to its work. Thus, while unable to
utilize and direct the resources of the countries,
as she could have done had they been her own
property, she secured the fruitful use and
reaped the profit of such commercial transac-
tions as were possible under the inert and
narrow rule of the Spaniards. The fact is
instructive, for the conditions to-day are sub-
stantially the same as those of a century ago.
Possession still vests in states and races which
have not attained yet the faculty of developing
by themselves the advantages conferred by
nature ; and control will abide still with those
whose ships, whose capital, whose traders sup-
port the industrial system of the region, provided
these are backed by a naval force adequate to
the demands of the military situation, rightly
understood. To any foreign state, control at
the Central American Isthmus means naval
control, naval predominance, to which tenure of
the land is at best but a convenient incident. ~f
Such, in brief, was the general tendency of
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