commerce occupies, to the power of a maritime state, the precise
nourishing function that the communications of an army supply to the
army? Blows at commerce are blows at the communications of the state;
they intercept its nourishment, they starve its life, they cut the
roots of its power, the sinews of its war. While war remains a factor,
a sad but inevitable factor, of our history, it is a fond hope that
commerce can be exempt from its operations, because in very truth
blows against commerce are the most deadly that can be struck; nor is
there any other among the proposed uses of a navy, as for instance the
bombardment of seaport towns, which is not at once more cruel and less
scientific. Blockade such as that enforced by the United States Navy
during the Civil War, is evidently only a special phase of
commerce-destroying; yet how immense--nay, decisive--its results!

It is only when effort is frittered away in the feeble dissemination
of the _guerre-de-course_, instead of being concentrated in a great
combination to control the sea, that commerce-destroying justly incurs
the reproach of misdirected effort. It is a fair deduction from
analogy, that two contending armies might as well agree to respect
each other's communications, as two belligerent states to guarantee
immunity to hostile commerce.




THE FUTURE IN RELATION TO AMERICAN NAVAL POWER.

_June, 1895._