The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-08-04

A recent suggestion by a London journal
that the japanese navy could readily over
power that of the United States and lay
waste San Francisco and the whole Pacific
slope leads the Review of Reviews to say:
This merely illustrates once more the in
vincible ignorance of London journalism.
Our vessels already in the Pacific and
adjacent waters are more than a match
for the whole Japanese navy, and would
need no assistance from that larger half
or our naval armament that is stationed
in the Atlantic. This same element OF
malevolent European journalism has limited
that 1t would be an admirable thing for
Japan to attack the United States with
Hawaii for an excuse, while Spain should
declare war simultaneously on the score
of Cuba. 1t is probably hard for some
Europeans TO believe that no sane person
in the United States would for a moment
have the slightest doubt about the outcome
under these circumstances.
There is a suggestion of bounce in
this, but it is substantially true. The i'm
portant point is that the strength of a navy
does not consist merely in the number of
armored vessels or the number OF guns
they carry and the weight of metal they
can throw, but in the men who handle the
ships and guns. Japan has twenty-eight
armored ships, Spain has eleven and the
nv PNGhN2 AL ~ ILL &C. " ~ Vim
pairing the armament of these ships in de-
tail or the strength of the respective navies
in other vessels, as gunboats, torpedo boats,
ETC., there can be no doubt that the United
States navy would easily be more than a
match for the Japanese and Spanish navies
combined. The Anglo-Saxons, viz, the
English and the Americans, are the two
great fighting peoples on sea. They are
the best sailors as well as the best fighters.
Japan has some fine war ships. but two or
three of our armored ships would sink her
whole navy. An article written by an Off
GER in the Spanish army and published re-
| Gently in a Madrid paper said:
At sea, while the Japanese are reputed
to be powerful, simply because they own
and man many good vessels, there is no
precedent to justify the belief that they
are superior to the Yankees. The famous
battle of Yalu, at which both ~contending
parties showed the measure of their power,
was evidently a proof OF Japan's superior
iy over China, but the truth is that the
Japanese abandoned the scene of battle
without pursuing the enemy because they
were ignorant of their triumph. The de-
feat of the Chinese was due to their cow
ardice rather than to the puissance of the
Japanese. If we compare the battle of
Yalu with the deeds of Porter and Farragut
along the Mississippi and before Charleston,
mobile ana. New orleans, we must come
to the conclusion that the Yalu battle fur
nishes no Indication, however slight, that
the Japanese have yet acquired that indi-
vidual and collective energy which is ex-
clusively possessed by the Indo-Germanic
race, and is an indispensable condition for
triumph in military undertakings.
This Spanish officer evidently knows what
he is talking about, and if truth were told
he might have added that, ship for ship
and gun for gun, the Americans in a naval
war would whip Spain as easily as they
would Japan. 1t is the men behind the
guns that tell.