fleet at Malta. Similarly, it would be very difficult for a
transatlantic state to maintain operations in the western Caribbean
with a United States fleet based upon Puerto Rico and the adjacent
islands. The same reasons prompted Bonaparte to seize Malta in his
expedition against Egypt and India in 1798. In his masterly eyes, as
in those of Nelson, it was essential to the communications between
France, Egypt, and India. His scheme failed, not because Malta was
less than invaluable, but for want of adequate naval strength,
without which no maritime position possesses value.

There were, therefore, in America two possible objectives for the
United States, in case of a war against Spain waged upon grounds at
all general in their nature; but to proceed against either was purely
a question of relative naval strength. Unless, and until, the United
States fleet available for service in the Caribbean Sea was strong
enough to control permanently the waters which separated the Spanish
islands from our territory nearest to them, the admitted vast
superiority of this country in potential resources for land warfare
was completely neutralized. If the Spanish Navy preponderated over
ours, it would be evidently impossible for transports carrying troops
and supplies to traverse the seas safely; and, unless they could so
do, operations of war in the enemy's colonies could neither be begun
nor continued. If, again, the two fleets were so equally balanced as
to make the question of ultimate preponderance doubtful, it was
clearly foolish to land in the islands men whom we might be compelled,
by an unlucky sea-fight, to abandon there.

This last condition was that which obtained, as war became imminent.
The force of the Spanish Navy--on paper, as the expression goes--was
so nearly equal to our own that it was well within the limits of
possibility that an unlucky incident--the loss, for example, of a
battleship--might make the Spaniard decisively superior in nominal, or
even in actual, available force. An excellent authority told the
writer that he considered that the loss of the _Maine_ had changed the
balance--that is, that whereas with the _Maine_ our fleet had been
slightly superior, so after her destruction the advantage, still
nominal, was rather the other way. We had, of course, a well-founded
confidence in the superior efficiency of our officers and men, and in
the probable better condition of our ships and guns; but where so much
i