Why the Sea is Important
From the time of this first step onward, the development of the human race was so intimately connected with the uninhabitable water that one of its most powerful incentives lay in the struggle with the sea. And so little have we advanced from this condition that the stoutest race of the present day is one that from a narrow island commands the ocean. England’s strength is a proof of the tremendous importance of the sea as a factor of political power and of civilisation. But not to exaggerate the significance of the ocean, we may at the same time remember that it consists in the fact that, by means of the sea, open highways are presented from land to land. Command of the sea is a source of greatness to nations, for it facilitates dominion over the land.
By reason of its consistency the water is an important agent of levelling and equalising effects. As we perceive this in Nature, so do we also in history. A race familiar with the sea in one place is familiar with it in all regions. The Normans off the coast of Finland, and the Spaniards in the Pacific, found the same green, surging element, moved by the same tides, subject to the same laws. The ocean has an equalising effect upon the coasts even; the dunes of Agadir and of the harbour at Vera Cruz awaken memories of home in the mind of the sailor from Hela. The diffusion of the sea over three-quarters of the earth’s surface must also be taken into account. Thus the influence of the ocean in rendering men familiar with different parts of the world is far greater than that of the land. From the ocean comes a constant unifying influence which ever tends to reduce the disuniting effect of the separation of land from land. As yet no attempt to extend boundaries beyond the land out over the sea has been followed by lasting success.
No Nation can Possess the Sea
No nation can or ever will possess the sea. Carthage and Tarentum wished to forbid Italian vessels the passage of the Lacinian capes by treaty; the Venetians desired dominion over the Adriatic to be granted them by the Pope; Denmark and Sweden strove for a dominion over the Baltic Sea; but all this is against the very nature of the sea; it is one and indivisible. Only near by the coast, within the three-mile limit of international law, and in landlocked bays, may it be ruled as land is ruled. The claims of the Americans concerning the sovereignty of Behring Sea have never been recognised, and England can retain dominion over the Irish Sea only by means of her naval power. The ocean has a unifying influence on the land, even when this influence consists only in the same ends to be attained being placed before different nations. During a time of the greatest disunion, German cities that lay far enough from one another were united by Baltic interests. The union of scattered land-forces prepared the way for the opening up of wider horizons to England in the sixteenth century in the same manner as for Italy and Germany in the nineteenth.
THE LITTLE ISLAND THAT RULES THE SEA
The command of the sea is the source of national greatness, as it facilitates dominion over land. England from a narrow island dominates the sea. The tiny part of white in the Eastern Hemisphere on this page shows how relatively insignificant Great Britain is to the vast world of waters where her shipping is supreme.
Sea power is far more closely connected with traffic than is land power; in fact, the foundation of sea power is trade and commerce. It is, however, more than mere commercial power and monopoly of trade. In spite of all egoism, greed, and violence there remains one great characteristic peculiar to maritime Powers, spared even by Punic faith and Venetian covetousness. Even the neighbourhood of the ocean is characterised by its vast natural features; rivers broaden as they approach the sea, great bays lie within the coasts, and, though the latter may be flat, the horizon lines of their low dune landscapes are broad. The horizons of maritime races are also broad. Whether it be the hope of profit from commerce or of gain from piracy that lures men forth, many a ship has returned to port bearing with it inestimable benefits to mankind; for the greatest maritime discoveries have not been mere explorations of new seas, but of new lands and peoples. Such discoveries as these have contributed most to the broadening of the historical horizon. Even political questions expand, assume a larger character, and often become less acute, when they emerge from the narrow limits of continental constraint upon the free and open coasts. This is true even of the Eastern Question, to the solution of which definite steps were taken upon the Mediterranean when it seemed to have come to a deadlock in the Balkan peninsula.