Naval Administration and Warfare: Some General Principles, with Other Essays

Front Cover
Little, Brown,, 1908 - Literary Criticism - 409 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 370 - I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
Page 367 - The American continents are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power.
Page 400 - We do not guarantee any state against punishment if it misconducts itself, provided that punishment does not take the form of the acquisition of territory by any non-American power.
Page 288 - Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace ; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face : Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most ancient Heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.
Page 407 - The justification for the United States taking this burden and incurring this responsibility is to be found in the fact that it is incompatible with international equity for the United States to refuse to allow other powers to take the only means at their disposal of satisfying the claims of their creditors and yet to refuse, itself, to take any such steps.
Page 199 - Strategy is the art of making war upon the map, and comprehends the whole theater of operations. Grand Tactics is the art of posting troops upon the battlefield according to the accidents of the ground...
Page 360 - The President believes that the formation of a protectorate by European nations over the isthmus transit would be in conflict with a doctrine which has been for many years asserted by the United States. This sentiment is properly termed a doctrine, as it has no prescribed sanction and its assertion is left to the exigency which may invoke it.
Page 407 - It has for some time been obvious that those who profit by the Monroe Doctrine must accept certain responsibilities along with the rights which it confers; and that the same statement applies to those who uphold the doctrine.
Page 382 - British and French representatives at Washington notified our government that orders had been issued to their squadrons in the West Indies to repel by force any attempts at the invasion of Cuba from any quarter. Our government replied that such action on the part of England and France could "not but be regarded by the United States with grave disapproval, as involving on the part of European sovereigns combined action of protectorship over American waters.
Page 389 - This policy is not a policy of aggression ; but it opposes the creation of European dominion on American soil, or its transfer to other European powers, and it looks hopefully to the time, when, by the voluntary departure of European Governments from this continent and the adjacent islands, America shall be wholly American.

About the author (1908)

Alfred Thayer Mahan was born on September 27, 1840 at West Point, New York, where his father was a professor of Civil and Military Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1859 and embarked on a nearly 40-year naval career seeing duty in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico against the Confederacy. He taught briefly at Annapolis, but spent most of his academic career at the newly founded Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where he eventually served as president. He wrote twenty books during his lifetime including The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783; The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812; The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future; The Life of Nelson; and The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence. He died on December 1, 1914.

Bibliographic information