So it is with navies.
The navy that can beat its enemy from all the shortest ways across the
sea must win the war, because the merchant ships of its own country,
like its men-of-war, can use the best routes from the bases to the
front and back again; while the merchant ships of its enemy must either
lose time by roundabout voyages or, what is sure to happen as the war
goes on, be driven off the high seas altogether.
The savages of long ago often took to the water when they found the
land too hot for them. If they were shepherds, a tyrant might seize
their flocks. If they were farmers, he might take their land away from
them. But it was not so easy to bully fishermen and hunters who could
paddle off and leave no trace behind them, or who could build forts on
islands that could only be taken after fights in which men who lived
mostly on the water would have a much better chance than men who lived
mostly on the land. In this way the water has often been more the home
of freedom than the land: liberty and sea-power have often gone
together; and a free people like ourselves have nearly always won and
kept freedom, both for themselves and others, by keeping up a navy of
their own or by forming part of such an Empire as the British, where
the Mother Country keeps up by far the greatest navy the world has ever
seen.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26