One
Of These Days The Respectable Republic Will Find This Out.
Unfortunately we, the English, will never be the people to teach
her; because she is a chartered libertine allowed to say and do
anything she likes, from demanding the head of the empress in an
editorial waste-basket, to chevying Canadian schooners up and
down the Alaska Seas.
It is perfectly impossible to go to war
with these people, whatever they may do.
They are much too nice, in the first place, and in the second, it
would throw out all the passenger traffic of the Atlantic, and
upset the financial arrangements of the English syndicates who
have invested their money in breweries, railways, and the like,
and in the third, it's not to be done. Everybody knows that, and
no one better than the American.
Yet there are other powers who are not "ohai band" (of the
brotherhood) - China, for instance. Try to believe an
irresponsible writer when he assures you that China's fleet
to-day, if properly manned, could waft the entire American navy
out of the water and into the blue. The big, fat Republic that
is afraid of nothing, because nothing up to the present date has
happened to make her afraid, is as unprotected as a jelly-fish.
Not internally, of course - it would be madness for any Power to
throw men into America; they would die - but as far as regards
coast defence.
From five miles out at sea (I have seen a test of her "fortified"
ports) a ship of the power of H. M. S. "Collingwood" (they
haven't run her on a rock yet) would wipe out any or every town
from San Francisco to Long Branch; and three first-class
ironclads would account for New York, Bartholdi's Statue and all.
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