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Captain Mahan's Sea Power in its Relation to the War of 1812, 2 vols. , is, of course, the final word concerning the naval events, but he also describes with keen analysis the progress of the operations on land and fills in the political background of cause and effect. Theodore Roosevelt's The Naval War of 1812 is spirited and accurate but makes no pretensions to a general survey.
They continually strove to make Englishmen realise that far more was involved than loyal support of England's only friends in Ireland; they quoted such pronouncements as Admiral Mahan's that "it is impossible for a military man, or a statesman with appreciation of military conditions, to look at a map and not perceive that if the ambition of the Irish Separatists were realised, it would be even more threatening to the national life of Britain than the secession of the South was to that of the American Republic.... An independent Parliament could not safely be trusted even to avowed friends"; and they showed over and over again, quoting chapter and verse from Nationalist utterances, and appealing to acknowledged facts in recent and contemporary history, that it was not to "avowed friends," but to avowed enemies, that Mr.
Germany did not turn her eyes seriously toward the navy until the Emperor William II read Mahan's book, "The Influence of Sea Power upon History." Previous to that epochal event, Germany had relied on her army to protect her interests and enforce her rights, being led thereto by the facts of her history and the shortness of her coast-line.
Bruce was still further aided by the shell-plowed condition of the hillside. Again and again he had to break his stride, to leap some shell-hole. Often he had to encircle such holes. More than once he bounded headlong down into a gaping crater and scrambled up its far side. Mahan's gaze followed the dog's every step. Bruce had cleared more than three-fourths of the slope.
From this peerless leader, whose playing was an inspiration to the men on his team, let us put on record, so that future heroes may also draw like inspiration from them, some of Mahan's own recollections of his playing days. "I think the greatest game I ever played in was the Princeton game in 1915, because we never knew until the last minute that we had won the game," says the Crimson star.
Mahan's very marked encomium upon the campaign of Vicksburg is so flattering to General Grant, that you may offer to let him keep the letter, if he values such a testimonial.
Sismondi, speaking of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, towards the end of the eleventh century, says 'these three cities had more vessels on the Mediterranean than the whole of Christendom besides. Dealing with a period two centuries later, he declares it 'difficult to comprehend how two simple cities could put to sea such prodigious fleets as those of Pisa and Genoa. The difficulty disappears when we have Mahan's explanation.
A thorough comprehension of the events of the first Punic war enables us to solve what, until Mahan wrote, had been one of the standing enigmas of history, viz. Hannibal's invasion of Italy by land instead of by sea in the second Punic war. Mahan's masterly examination of this question has set at rest all doubts as to the reason of Hannibal's action.
When Mahan's army came to Yermouk this gentleman used to entertain the officers and treat them nobly. To requite him for his courtesy, while they were this day revelling at his house, they bade him bring out his wife to them, and upon his refusing they took her by force and abused her all night, and to aggravate their barbarity they seized his little son and cut his head off.
Strong as he was, Mahan had both hands full in holding the frantic Bruce back from his enemy. Under the insult of the kick from this masquerader, whom he had already recognized as a foe, the collie had temporarily lost every vestige of his stately dignity. He was for the moment merely a wild beast, seeking revenge for a brutal injury. He writhed and fought in Mahan's grasp.
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