Page 160 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

American Naval Power. 141

lies the security of civil society even more
than it affects the relations of states. The
well-balanced faculties of Washington saw this
in his day with absolute clearness. Jefferson
either would not or could not. That there
should be no navy was a cardinal prepossession
of his political thought, born of an exagger-
ated fear of organized military force as a politi-
cal factor. Though possessed with a passion
for annexation which dominated much of his
political action, he prescribed as the limit of
the country's geographical expansion the line
beyond which it would entail the maintenance
of a navy. Yet fate, ironical here as else-
where in his administration, compelled the
recognition that, unless a policy of total seclu-
sion is adopted, — if even then, — it is not
necessary to acquire territory beyond sea in
order to undergo serious international compli-
cations, which could have been avoided much
more easily had there been an imposing armed
shipping to throw into the scale of the nations
argument, and to compel the adversary to recog-
nize the impolicy of his course as well as
what the United States then claimed to be its
wrongfulness.