may be opportune or necessary cannot yet be foretold certainly, is not a reason the less, but a reason the more, for establishing a principle of action which may serve to guide as opportunities arise.  Let us start from the fundamental truth, warranted by history, that the control of the seas, and especially along the great lines drawn by national interest or national commerce, is the chief among the merely material elements in the power and prosperity of nations.  It is so because the sea is the world’s great medium of circulation.  From this necessarily follows the principle that, as subsidiary to such control, it is imperative to take possession, when it can be done righteously, of such maritime positions as contribute to secure command.  If this principle be adopted, there will be no hesitation about taking the positions—­and they are many—­upon the approaches to the Isthmus, whose interests incline them to seek us.  It has its application also to the present case of Hawaii.

There is, however, one caution to be given from the military point of view, beyond the need of which the world has not yet passed.  Military positions, fortified posts, by land or by sea, however strong or admirably situated, do not confer control by themselves alone.  People often say that such an island or harbor will give control of such a body of water.  It is an utter, deplorable, ruinous mistake.  The phrase indeed may be used by some only loosely, without forgetting other implied conditions of adequate protection and adequate navies; but the confidence of our own nation in its native strength, and its indifference to the defence of its ports and the sufficiency of its fleet, give reason to fear that the full consequences of a forward step may not be weighed soberly.  Napoleon, who knew better, once talked this way.  “The islands of San Pietro, Corfu, and Malta,” he wrote, “will make us masters of the whole Mediterranean.”  Vain boast!  Within one year Corfu, in two years Malta, were rent away from the state that could not support them by its ships.  Nay, more:  had Bonaparte not taken the latter stronghold out of the hands of its degenerate but innocuous government, that citadel of the Mediterranean would perhaps—­would probably—­never have passed into those of his chief enemy.  There is here also a lesson for us.

It is by no means logical to leap, from this recognition of the necessity of adequate naval force to secure outlying dependencies, to the conclusion that the United States would need for that object a navy equal to the largest now existing.  A nation as far removed as is our own from the bases of foreign naval strength may reasonably reckon upon the qualification that distance—­not to speak of the complex European interests close at hand—­impresses upon the exertion of naval strength by European powers.  The mistake is when our remoteness, unsupported by carefully calculated force, is regarded as an armor of proof, under cover of which any amount of swagger