editerranean island.

That any country should be able to hold a distant base close to
the home base of a possible naval enemy might seem impossible,
if we did not know that Great Britain holds Bermuda and Jamaica
near to our own coast, and Hong-Kong actually inside of China,
all far away from Britain; besides Malta and Gibraltar in the
Mediterranean, nearer to the coasts of sometime enemies than to
her own. That the United States should own a base far from her own
coasts, and near those of other countries, might seem improbable,
were it not for the fact that Guam is such a base, and is so situated.
It is true that Guam is not strictly a naval base, because it is
not so equipped or fortified; but we are thinking now of position
only.

In case the enemy country has several home bases, and it is impossible
to have our distant base so near to them as to prevent the junction
of parts of a fleet issuing from them, the value of the base is
less than it otherwise would be.

In this case, which is the one in which our country is actually
concerned, because of its great distance from other countries, its
value becomes merely the usual value attaching to a naval base;
and the fact that the entire enemy fleet can operate as a unit, that
it can divide into separate forces at will near its own shores,
or send out detachments to prey on the long line of communications
stretching from our distant base to that base's home, necessitates
that the base be fortified in the strongest possible way, and provided
with large amounts of supplies. Its principal function in war would
be to shorten the long trip that our vessels would have to make
without refreshment, and therefore the length of their lines of
communications, and to enable our vessels to arrive in enemy's waters
in better condition of readiness for battle than would otherwise
be the case.

We have thus far considered the best position for an advanced naval
base, in the case of operations against one country only.

It seems clear that, if we are to consider operations against two
countries separately, and at different times, we should be led
to conclude that the case of each country should be decided
individually; in the case of wars with Norway and Portugal, for
instance, the best places for our two bases would be as close to
the home bases of those countries as possible; and even in the
case of fighting two simultaneously, the conclusion would be the
same, if the two countr