The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence | Page 7

Holland in which brought war between that country
and Great Britain, in 1780. This extension of hostilities affected not
only the West Indies but the East, through the possessions of the Dutch
in both quarters and at the Cape of Good Hope. If not the occasion of
Suffren being sent to India, the involvement of Holland in the general
war had a powerful effect upon the brilliant operations which he
conducted there; as well as at, and for, the Cape of Good Hope, then a
Dutch possession, on his outward voyage.

In the separate publication of these pages, my intention and hope are to
bring home incidentally to American readers this vast extent of the
struggle to which our own Declaration of Independence was but the
prelude; with perchance the further needed lesson for the future, that
questions the most remote from our own shores may involve us in
unforeseen difficulties, especially if we permit a train of
communication to be laid by which the outside fire can leap step by
step to the American continents. How great a matter a little fire
kindleth! Our Monroe Doctrine is in final analysis merely the
formulation of national precaution that, as far as in its power to prevent,
there shall not lie scattered about the material which foreign
possessions in these continents might supply for the extension of
combustion originating elsewhere; and the objection to Asiatic
immigration, however debased by less worthy feelings or motives, is on
the part of thinking men simply a recognition of the same danger
arising from the presence of an inassimilable mass of population,
racially and traditionally distinct in characteristics, behind which would
lie the sympathies and energy of a powerful military and naval Asiatic
empire.
Conducive as each of these policies is to national safety and peace amid
international conflagration, neither the one nor the other can be
sustained without the creation and maintenance of a preponderant navy.
In the struggle with which this book deals, Washington at the time said
that the navies had the casting vote. To Arnold on Lake Champlain, to
DeGrasse at Yorktown, fell the privilege of exercising that prerogative
at the two great decisive moments of the War. To the Navy also,
beyond any other single instrumentality, was due eighty years later the
successful suppression of the movement of Secession. The effect of the
blockade of the Southern coasts upon the financial and military
efficiency of the Confederate Government has never been closely
calculated, and probably is incalculable. At these two principal national
epochs control of the water was the most determinative factor. In the
future, upon the Navy will depend the successful maintenance of the
two leading national policies mentioned; the two most essential to the
part this country is to play in the progress of the world.

For, while numerically great in population, the United States is not so
in proportion to territory; nor, though wealthy, is she so in proportion to
her exposure. That Japan at four thousand miles distance has a
population of over three hundred to the square mile, while our three
great Pacific States average less than twenty, is a portentous fact. The
immense aggregate numbers resident elsewhere in the United States
cannot be transfered thither to meet an emergency, nor contribute
effectively to remedy this insufficiency; neither can a land force on the
defensive protect, if the way of the sea is open. In such opposition of
smaller numbers against larger, nowhere do organisation and
development count as much as in navies. Nowhere so well as on the sea
can a general numerical inferiority be compensated by specific
numerical superiority, resulting from the correspondence between the
force employed and the nature of the ground. It follows strictly, by
logic and by inference, that by no other means can safety be insured as
economically and as efficiently. Indeed, in matters of national security,
economy and efficiency are equivalent terms. The question of the
Pacific is probably the greatest world problem of the twentieth century,
in which no great country is so largely and directly interested as is the
United States. For the reason given it is essentially a naval question, the
third in which the United States finds its well-being staked upon naval
adequacy.
CHAPTER I
THE NAVAL CAMPAIGN ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 1775-1776
At the time when hostilities began between Great Britain and her
American Colonies, the fact was realised generally, being evident to
reason and taught by experience, that control of the water, both ocean
and inland, would have a preponderant effect upon the contest. It was
clear to reason, for there was a long seaboard with numerous interior
navigable watercourses, and at the same time scanty and indifferent
communications by land. Critical portions of the territory involved
were yet an unimproved wilderness. Experience, the rude