"The Valor of Ignorance." By Homer Lea. Illustrated with specially prepared maps. Cloth, gilt top. Price $1.80 net. Harper and Brothers, publishers, New York and London.
A better understood title of this striking book would be "The Control of the Pacific," or "The Future Mastery of the Pacific;" for General Lea very clearly sets forth who the master of the great ocean might be regardless of the United States in her present unprepared naval condition.
The matter composing this book is not a hasty, ill-considered utterance. It was written before the Portsmouth Treaty (between Japan and Russia), signed in September and October, 1905. It was laid aside by the author, that sufficient lapse of time might verify or disprove its theories. He now feels that his views have been confirmed, and that he is justified in giving his conclusions and the reasons therefor to the public. Some of the chapters appeared in Harper's Weekly last year, and we gave them quite extended review at the time. They are before us now in book form. The author is himself a military officer, and evidently writes whereof he knows. Lieutenant-General Adna R. Chaffee, late chief-of-staff, United States Army, writes the "Introduction," and says of the work, "We do not know of any work in military literature published in the United States more deserving the attention of men who study the history of the United States and the Science of War than this—The Valor of Ignorance." A second introduction by Major-General J. P. Story, a retired officer of the United States Army, echoes the same thought.
The object of General Lea's book is to show the utter unpreparedness of the United States, in case of war with Japan, for instance, and therefore her utter inability to defend or retain her possessions in the Pacific, or to prevent Japan from seizing and holding for indefinite time her entire Pacific Coast region. He shows that the United States is lacking in colliers and complete naval equipment, in transports, in men, in disciplined soldiers, in effective plans, to meet possible attack or invasion. He shows that Japan is now the great military power of the Pacific, and that it would be perfectly possible for her to seize and safeguard with defenses the Philippines, Guam, the Hawaiian Islands, and Alaska. That little island empire has sufficient transports to land on the Pacific Coast, within three months, 400,000 troops, and seize all its large cities, defended with "insignificant resistance," before the United States could muster an army to repel or even to check her. And then if the army and the navy of the East were sent to the West, the East itself would be open to the invasion of an army of 250,000 from Germany, which according to the German General Staff could be landed in two weeks. Under latter-day transportation conditions America is indeed isolated no longer.
The first part of the book is an able philosophical treatise on the underlying reasons of the rise and fall of nations. The author keenly dissects and analyzes the different forms of patriotism, the commonest of which "is to be found in uncompromising and general contempt for all nations, together with an inveterate prejudice against some one of them." Another is that which condones or conceals national faults and crimes, and indulges in vaingloriousness. Conversely, the true patriot is the one who recognizes the strength and power of other nations, notes the faults and crimes and weaknesses of his own, and seeks at all times to correct them. To quote:
"If there is any patriotism worth having, it belongs alone to the primitive principles of the Republic, to the militant patriotism of those who in simple, persistent valor laid with their swords the foundation of this national edifice, and who after seven years of labor cemented with their own blood the thirteen blocks of its foundation. The continuation of this building, and the endless extension of the Republic, the maintenance of its ideals, and the consummation, in a world-wide sense, of the aspirations of its founders, constitutes the only pure patriotism to which an American can lay claim, or, in defense of, lay down his life."
The author recognizes that many will be bitter against him for the writing of the book, for laying open the faults and weaknesses of the great Republic; but this very thing he believes it duty to do. The book presents conditions pregnant with awful possibilities. Fear of untoward complications—to our mind, God's supervision over the affairs of nations—will postpone war for a time—then Armageddon. The conditions in America, her unpreparedness for war, her heterogeneous, unstable population, her ignorance of actually changed conditions, seem to demand from the patriot lover of his country just such a warning as this. It is eloquent of the truth of divine prophecy.