Proceedings, Jan.-Feb., 1920.
AMERICAN SUBMARINE OPERATIONS IN THE WORLD WAR, by Prof.
C. S. Alden, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings. June-July, 1920.
For more popular treatment see also SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SUBMARINE,
Sir Henry Newbolt, 1919; THE FIGHTING FLEETS, Ralph
D. Payne, 1918; THE U-BOAT HUNTERS, James B. Connolly, 1918;
SEA WARFARE, Rudyard Kipling, 1917; etc.

CHAPTER XIX

CONCLUSION

The brief survey of sea power in the preceding chapters has shown
that the ocean has been the highway for the march of civilization and
empire. Crete in its day became a great island power and distributed
throughout the Mediterranean the wealth and the arts of its own
culture and that of Egypt. In turn, Phoenicia held sway on the inland
sea, and though creating little, she seized upon and developed the
material and intellectual resources of her neighbors, and carried
them not only to the corners of the Mediterranean, but far out
on the unknown sea. Later when Phoenicia was subject to Persia,
Athens by her triremes saved the growing civilization of Greece,
and during a brief period of glory planted the seeds of Greek,
as opposed to Asiatic culture, on the islands and coasts of the
AEgean. After Athens, Carthage inherited the trident, and in turn
fell before the energy of a land power, Rome. And as the Roman
Empire grew to include practically all of the known world, every
waterway, river and ocean, served to spread Roman law, engineering,
and ideals of practical efficiency, at the same time bringing back
to the heart of the Empire not only the products of the colonies,
but such impalpable treasures as the art, literature, and philosophy
of Greece. This was the story of the sea in antiquity.

After the dissolution of the Roman empire, as Christian peoples
were struggling in blood and darkness, a great menace came from
Arabia, the Saracen invasion, which was checked successfully and
repeatedly by the navy of Constantinople. To this, primarily, is
due the preservation of the Christian ideal in the world. Later, the
cities of Italy began to reestablish sea commerce, which had been
for centuries interrupted by pirates. Venice gained the ascendancy,
and Venetian ships carried the Crusading armies during the centuries
when western peoples went eastward to fight for the Cross and brought
back new ideas they had learned from the Infidels. Then there arose
a new Mohammedan threat, the Turk, determined like the earlier
Sa