ideas at the time moribund.  In its first application, therefore, it was a confession that danger of European complications did exist, under conditions far less provocative of real European interest than those which now obtain and are continually growing.  Its subsequent applications have been many and various, and the incidents giving rise to them have been increasingly important, culminating up to the present in the growth of the United States to be a great Pacific power, and in her probable dependence in the near future upon an Isthmian canal for the freest and most copious intercourse between her two ocean seaboards.  In the elasticity and flexibleness with which the dogma thus has accommodated itself to varying conditions, rather than in the strict wording of the original statement, is to be seen the essential characteristic of a living principle—­the recognition, namely, that not merely the interests of individual citizens, but the interests of the United States as a nation, are bound up with regions beyond the sea, not part of our own political domain, in which therefore, under some imaginable circumstances, we may be forced to take action.

It is important to recognize this, for it will help clear away the error from a somewhat misleading statement frequently made,—­that the United States needs a navy for defence only, adding often, explanatorily, for the defence of our own coasts.  Now in a certain sense we all want a navy for defence only.  It is to be hoped that the United States will never seek war except for the defence of her rights, her obligations, or her necessary interests.  In that sense our policy may always be defensive only, although it may compel us at times to steps justified rather by expediency—­the choice of the lesser evil—­than by incontrovertible right.  But if we have interests beyond sea which a navy may have to protect, it plainly follows that the navy has more to do, even in war, than to defend the coast; and it must be added as a received military axiom that war, however defensive in moral character, must be waged aggressively if it is to hope for success.

For national security, the correlative of a national principle firmly held and distinctly avowed is, not only the will, but the power to enforce it.  The clear expression of national purpose, accompanied by evident and adequate means to carry it into effect, is the surest safeguard against war, provided always that the national contention is maintained with a candid and courteous consideration of the rights and susceptibilities of other states.  On the other hand, no condition is more hazardous than that of a dormant popular feeling, liable to be roused into action by a moment of passion, such as that which swept over the North when the flag was fired upon at Sumter, but behind which lies no organized power for action.  It is on the score of due preparation for such an ultimate contingency that nations, and especially free nations, are most often deficient.  Yet, if