Page 147 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

128 Possibilities of an

then, if supreme, concede to an enemy immunity
" Neither Great Britain nor
for his commerce ?
America," says Sir George Clarke, though he
elsewhere qualifies the statement, "can see in
the commerce of other peoples an incentive to
attack." Why not ? For what purposes, pri-
marily, do navies exist ? Surely not merely to
fight one another, — to gain what Jomini calls
" the sterile glory " of fighting battles in order
to win them. If navies, as all agree, exist for
the protection of commerce, it inevitably follows
that in war they must aim at depriving their
enemy of that great resource ; nor is it easy to
conceive what broad military use they can sub-
serve that at all compares with the protection and
destruction of trade. This Sir George indeed
sees, for he says elsewhere, " Only on the prin-
ciple of doing the utmost injury to an enemy,
with a view to hasten the issue of war, can
commerce-destroying be justified ; " but he fails,
I think, to appreciate the full importance of this
qualifying concession, and neither he nor Mr.
White seems to admit the immense importance
of commerce-destroying, as such.
The mistake of both, I think, lies in not
keeping clearly in view— what both certainly