David and Goliath
DAVID AND GOLIATH T ADY ASTOR'S offer to "tour the world" on a ¦¦—'self-imposed mission against the submarine, following the loss of the British M-41, is dramatic and plausible. But for fellow...
...Whenever the crusade on war takes the shape, not of root-and-branch condemnation, but of an objection to some particular form, it is a wise thing to suspend judgment and to ask oneself whether the real root of the objection does not, like the diatribes of the armored knight of the fifteenth century against gunpowder, lie in some disadvantage to which it is exposing the nation that makes itself its mouthpiece...
...It is too early in the day to say that the invention of the submarine has brought about a complete shift in the situation...
...But for fellow countrymen and countrywomen who have not identified themselves as completely with the British point of view as this Virginia peeress, a few questions are in order...
...But it has at least cast the shadow of a doubt upon the school for which Captain Mahan's famous book on sea power is the evangel...
...The race for armaments at sea has become one in which practically two powers, or three at the very most, can pretend to keep the pace...
...The submarine is the answer to the dreadnaught...
...A single super-dreadnaught, with her batteries ranged on the seaport of one of the smaller maritime powers, can impose its will by the threat of a single broadside...
...One hundred years ago, a small and weak nation, particularly if it possessed a sea-going population, could send to sea fleets which, hull for hull, were not markedly inferior to anything the stronger powers could array against it...
...Dreadnaughts and superdreadnaughts are launched today by the greater powers whose cost represents the entire sum that such powers as Norway, Portugal and Denmark are able to allot for their maritime defense...
...Nor has any one power (and this is said with full cognizance of all that can be retorted as to Britain's beneficent intentions and her fidelity to the role she loves to be told is hers—of custodian of the world's peace) done more than she to set a pace in construction which has ended by making the navies of smaller nations ridiculous and futile...
...But, on the face of it, it lacks the logic and moral force which make crusades respectable...
...An attempt to take away scrip and sling from David, while leaving the buckler and greaves and spear like a weaver's beam in the hands and on the back of Goliath, may have a lot of official backing...
...But, so long as the objection is not made part of a universal crusade against war (where it is perfectly in place, as Senator Borah points out) America and the world at large would do well to reserve judgment...
...One can well imagine the detestation with which it is regarded in Britain and the tremendous official backing which any sort of crusade against it will receive...
...It has made the super-dreadnaught, costing from ten to fifteen million dollars, an adventure that is as fragile as it is formidable...
...The era of steel and iron and mechanics, the advance in armament and ballistics, has changed all that...
...A thing that should never be left out of sight when considering the sorry merits of submarine (and to a lesser extent, air) warfare, is that for the first time in many years it has put a powerful weapon into the hands of nations who can allot only thousands instead of millions to their programs of national defense...
...Seen in this light a good deal of the fine humanitarianism that invests Lady Astor's gesture at first sight, falls away, leaving us confronted with problems of a more practical order...
Vol. 3 • November 1925 • No. 3
