years ago warned the United
States Government that even the annexation of Hawaii could not by her
be seen with indifference--now welcome our presence in the
Philippines.

This altered attitude, on the part of a people of such keen
intelligence, has a justification which should not be ignored, and a
significance which should not be overlooked. It bears vivid testimony
to the rate at which events, as well as their appreciation of events
and of conditions, have been advancing. It is one of the symptoms of a
gathering accord of conviction upon a momentous subject. At such a
time, and on such a scene, the sympathetic drawing together of the two
great English-speaking nations, intensely commercial and enterprising,
yet also intensely warlike when aroused, and which exceed all others
in their possibilities of maritime greatness, gave reason for
reflection far exceeding that which springs from imaginative
calculations of the future devastations of war. It was a direct result
of the war with Spain, inevitably suggesting a probable drift towards
concurrent action upon the greatest question of the immediate future,
in which the influence of force will be none the less real because
sedulously kept in the background of controversies. If, however, the
organic development of military strength could be temporarily arrested
by general agreement, or by the prevalence of an opinion that war is
practically a thing of the past, the odds would be in favor of the
state which at the moment of such arrest enjoys the most advantageous
conditions of position, and of power already created.

In reproducing these articles, the writer has done a little editing,
of which it is needless to speak except in one respect. His views on
the utility of coast fortification have met with pronounced adverse
criticism in some quarters in England. Of this he has neither cause
nor wish to complain; but he is somewhat surprised that his opinions
on the subject here expressed are thought to be essentially opposed to
those he has previously avowed in his books,--the Influence of
Sea-Power upon History, and upon the French Revolution. While wholly
convinced of the primacy of the navy in maritime warfare, and
maintaining the subordination to it of the elements of power which
rest mainly upon land positions, he has always clearly recognized, and
incidentally stated, not only the importance of the latter, but the
general necessity of affording them the security of fort