g control or special privileges in unexploited areas
and backward states, by building up a merchant fleet under the
national flag. Obviously, since the seas join the continents and
form the great highways of trade, this commercial and political
expansion would give increased importance to naval power.

[Footnote 1: Coal production increased during the century from
11.6 million tons to 610 million, and pig iron from half a million
tons to 37 million. Figures from Day, HISTORY OF COMMERCE, Ch.
XXVIII.]

Admiral Mahan, an acute political observer as well as strategist,
summed up the international situation in 1895 and again in 1897 as
"an equilibrium on the [European] Continent, and, in connection
with the calm thus resulting, an immense colonizing movement in
which all the great powers were concerned."[1] Later, in 1911, he
noted that colonial rivalries had again been superseded by rivalries
within Europe, but pointed out that the European tension was itself
largely the product of activities and ambitions in more distant
spheres. In fact the international developments of recent times,
whether in the form of colonial enterprises, armament competition,
or actual warfare, find a common origin in economic and commercial
interests. Commerce and quick communications have drawn the world
into closer unity, yet by a kind of paradox have increased the
possibilities of conflict. Both by their common origin and by their
far-reaching consequences, it is thus possible to connect the story
of naval events from the Spanish-American to the World War, and to
gather them up under the general title, "rivalry for world power."

1. THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

To this rivalry the United States could hardly hope or desire to
remain always a passive spectator, yet, aside from trying to stabilize
the western hemisphere by the Monroe Doctrine, she cherished down
to the year 1898 a policy of isolation from world affairs. During
the first half of the 19th century, it is true, her interests were
directed outward by a flourishing merchant marine. In 1860 the
American merchant fleet of 2,500,000 tons was second only to Great
Britain's and nearly equal to that of all other nations combined.
But its decay had already begun, and continued rapidly. The change
from wood to iron construction enabled England to build cheaper
ships; and American shipping suffered also from lack of government
patronage, diversion of capital into mare profitable projects of