Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [84]
Opposed to expansion in any form, Cleveland was a man of integrity, as well as shape, similar to Reed’s. Once, when mistaken for Cleveland in an ill-lit room, Reed said, “Mercy! Don’t tell Grover. He is too proud of his good looks already.” Before he had been in office a week, Cleveland recalled the treaty of annexation from the Senate, much to the distress of Reed’s young friend, Roosevelt, who felt “very strongly” about “hauling down the flag,” as he called it.
The motive of the annexationists had been economic self-interest. It took Mahan to transform the issue into one of national and fateful importance. In the same March that Cleveland recalled the treaty, Mahan published an article in the Forum entitled “Hawaii and Our Future Sea Power,” in which he declared that command of the seas was the chief element in the power and prosperity of nations and it was therefore “imperative to take possession, when it can righteously be done, of such maritime positions as contribute to secure command.” Hawaii “fixes the attention of the strategist”; it occupies a position of “unique importance … powerfully influencing the commercial and military control of the Pacific.” In another article published by the Atlantic Monthly in the same month, Mahan argued the imperative need, for the future of American sea power, of the proposed Isthmian Canal.
Captain Mahan’s pronouncements were somehow couched in tones of such authority, as much a product of character as of style, as to make everything he wrote appear indisputable. He was already the author of The Influence of Sea Power on History, given originally as lectures at the Naval War College in 1887 and published as a book in 1890. Its effect on the naval profession abroad, if not at home, was immediate and tremendous, and even at home, although it had taken three years to find a publisher, it excited the attention of various thoughtful persons concerned with national policy. Theodore Roosevelt, who as the author at twenty-four of a book on The Naval War of 1812 had been invited to speak at the Naval War College, heard and became a disciple of Mahan. When The Influence of Sea Power on History was published he read it “straight through” and wrote to Mahan that he was convinced it would become “a naval classic.” Walter Hines Page of the Forum and Horace E. Scudder of the Atlantic Monthly, editors in the days when magazines were vital arenas of opinion, regularly gave Mahan space. Harvard and Yale conferred LL.D.’s. Nor were all his professional colleagues traditionalists opposed to things new. His predecessor at the Naval War College, Admiral Stephen Luce, who had selected Mahan to succeed him when Luce himself was named to command the North Atlantic Squadron, brought his squadron to Newport so that his officers could hear the lectures of this new man who, Luce predicted, would do for naval science what Jomini in the days of Napoleon had done for military science. After the first lecture, Luce stood up and proclaimed, “He is here and his name is Mahan!”
What Mahan had discovered was the controlling factor of sea power; that whoever is master of the seas is master of the situation. Like M. Jourdain who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, it was a truth that had been operative for a long time without any of its operators being consciously aware of it, and Mahan’s formulation was stunning. His first book was followed and confirmed by a second, The Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution, published in 1892. The original idea had come to him “from within” when, on reading Mommsen’s History of Rome, “it struck me how different things might have been could Hannibal have invaded Italy by sea … or could he, after arrival, have been in free communication with Carthage