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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 289, 3 June 1912, Page 4

BRITISH SEA POWER AND LIBERTY.

Admiral Mahan's notions of tlie farreaching effects of sea power may not be shared "by all, but he states his case with clearness and force. In a recent article he writes: —'''Why do English innate po- ) litical conceptions of popular representative government, of the balance of law and liberty, prevail in North America from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ? Because the command of the seas at the decisive era belonged to Great Britain. In India and Egypt administrative efficiency has taken the place of a welter of tyranny, feudal struggle and bloodshed, achieving thereby the comparative welfare of the once harried populations. What underlies this administrative efficiency ?• The, British navy, assuring in the first instance 'British control instead of French, and thereafter communication with the Home Country, whence the local power -without which administration everywhere is futile. What, at the mo-1 ment the Monroe doctrine was proclaim- I ing, insured beyond peradventure the im- I munity from foreign oppression of the Spanish-American colonies in their struggle for independence? The command of the sea by Great Britain, backed by the feeble navy but imposing, strategic situation of the United States, with her swafm of potential commerce destroyers, which a decade 'before had harassed the trade of even the mistress of the seas. Less conspicuously, but no less truly, to what do Algiers ami Tunis, and to what eventually will Morocco owe redemption from conditions barely, if at all, above the barbarous ? To the command of the sea by the nation which already has restored the former two to be fruitful members of the world community. That South Africa is now a united commonwealth, instead of two opposing communities, such as the North and South of our country might have been, is due to the same cause; a local preponderance of force insured by sea power. It may safely be claimed that to the navy of the United l States chiefly is owing the present union, instead of the existence of two rival nations vying, or trying to vie, with eacli other in military preparations, like the nations of Europe. The four years' struggle of the Confederated States might not have ended in exhaustion had it not been for the blockade, which shut in their cotton and shut out their supplies.