Durable naval power, besides, depends ultimately upon extensive commercial relations; consequently, and especially in an insular state, it is rarely aggressive, in the military sense.  Its instincts are naturally for peace, because it has so much at stake outside its shores.  Historically, this has been the case with the conspicuous example of sea power, Great Britain, since she became such; and it increasingly tends to be so.  It is also our own case, and to a yet greater degree, because, with an immense compact territory, there has not been the disposition to external effort which has carried the British flag all over the globe, seeking to earn by foreign commerce and distant settlement that abundance of resource which to us has been the free gift of nature—­or of Providence.  By her very success, however, Great Britain, in the vast increase and dispersion of her external interests, has given hostages to fortune, which for mere defence impose upon her a great navy.  Our career has been different, our conditions now are not identical, yet our geographical position and political convictions have created for us also external interests and external responsibilities, which are likewise our hostages to fortune.  It is not necessary to roam afar in search of adventures; popular feeling and the deliberate judgment of statesmen alike have asserted that, from conditions we neither made nor control, interests beyond the sea exist, have sprung up of themselves, which demand protection.  “Beyond the sea”—­that means a navy.  Of invasion, in any real sense of the word, we run no risk, and if we did, it must be by sea; and there, at sea, must be met primarily, and ought to be met decisively, any attempt at invasion of our interests, either in distant lands, or at home by blockade or by bombardment.  Yet the force of men in the navy is smaller, by more than half, than that in the army.

The necessary complement of those admirable measures which have been employed now for over a decade in the creation of naval material is the preparation of an adequate force of trained men to use this material when completed.  Take an entirely fresh man:  a battleship can be built and put in commission before he becomes a trained man-of-war’s man, and a torpedo-boat can be built and ready for service before, to use the old sea phrase, “the hay seed is out of his hair.”  Further, in a voluntary service, you cannot keep your trained men as you can your completed ship or gun.  The inevitable inference is that the standing force must be large, because you can neither create it hastily nor maintain it by compulsion.  Having fixed the amount of material,—­the numbers and character of the fleet,—­from this follows easily the number of men necessary to man it.  This aggregate force can then be distributed, upon some accepted idea, between the standing navy and the reserve.  Without fixing a proportion between the two, the present writer is convinced that the reserve should be but a small percentage of the whole,