with our exposed great cities? Even were the coast fortified, she still
could do so, if our navy be no stronger than is designed as yet. What
harm can we do Canada proportionate to the injury we should suffer by
the interruption of our coasting trade, and by a blockade of Boston,
New York, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake? Such a blockade Great
Britain certainly could make technically efficient, under the somewhat
loose definitions of international law. Neutrals would accept it as
such.

The military needs of the Pacific States, as well as their supreme
importance to the whole country, are yet a matter of the future, but of
a future so near that provision should begin immediately. To weigh
their importance, consider what influence in the Pacific would be
attributed to a nation comprising only the States of Washington,
Oregon, and California, when filled with such men as now people them
and still are pouring in, and which controlled such maritime centres as
San Francisco, Puget Sound, and the Columbia River. Can it be counted
less because they are bound by the ties of blood and close political
union to the great communities of the East? But such influence, to work
without jar and friction, requires underlying military readiness, like
the proverbial iron hand under the velvet glove. To provide this, three
things are needful: First, protection of the chief harbors, by
fortifications and coast-defence ships, which gives defensive strength,
provides security to the community within, and supplies the bases
necessary to all military operations. Secondly, naval force, the arm of
offensive power, which alone enables a country to extend its influence
outward. Thirdly, it should be an inviolable resolution of our national
policy, that no foreign state should henceforth acquire a coaling
position within three thousand miles of San Francisco,--a distance
which includes the Hawaiian and Galapagos islands and the coast of