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| Mahan |
By Kevin D. McCranie, Naval War College
As July 1914 slipped into August, Europe convulsed into war. The actions of statesmen, the mobilization plans of militaries, and the fervor of peoples merged onto a path that yielded years of destruction later known as the First World War. However, across the Atlantic the mood was quite different; there, interest kindled in a way that occurs only when watching a catastrophe develop from afar.
Few in the first tumultuous weeks of the war became more captivated than Alfred Thayer Mahan. For over a quarter of a century, he had commented on the international environment, with a particular emphasis on the naval and economic elements of what he termed sea power. In the very year the war began, one article described Mahan as “America’s foremost naval strategist” and “the world’s greatest authority on sea power.” Needless to say, demand for his opinions about the war outpaced his capacity to supply them. Newspapers wanted his thoughts and magazines asked for articles. Overnight, he became inundated.
Then it all stopped. On 6 August, just two days after Britain declared war on Germany, President Woodrow Wilson issued the following instructions to both the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy: “I write to suggest that you request and advise all officers of the service, whether active or retired, to refrain from public comment of any kind upon the military or political situation on the other side of the water.” Worried about how the states of Europe would perceive America’s professed neutrality, Wilson asserted, “It seems to me highly unwise and improper that officers of the Navy and Army of the United States should make any public utterances to which any color of political or military criticism can be given where other nations are involved.”
When Mahan, a retired USN officer, learned of Wilson’s order, he begged for governmental leaders to reconsider: “I would represent that the status of a retired naval officer is by law so detached from employment by the government, that his relation to the course of the government, and the consequent responsibility of the Government for his published opinions, differs scarcely at all from the case of a private citizen.” Mahan asked whether Wilson even had the authority to restrict a retired officer such as himself from writing.
Although he appealed for reconsideration, Mahan would not disobey the order. A life in the naval service had created too strong a loyalty for him to trespass against a presidential directive. Mahan’s son later explained that his father stopped his current writing project almost mid-sentence: “He obeyed the order so far that he would not even set pen to paper to write.” Wilson’s directive stifled Mahan’s airing of his views on the war; however, articles he had written before the presidential order, plus a smattering of comments in private letters over the next few months, supply important evidence of his opinions. Since Mahan died on 1 December 1914, his reflections on the war constituted his last words on the international environment and naval strategy.
These final thoughts challenge several stereotypes often ascribed to Mahan’s broader theory relating to sea power while providing a more thorough explanation of Mahan’s most mature theoretical arguments. President Wilson’s order forced Mahan to restrict his musings about the war to private letters to friends. In these, he kept coming back to a similar overall argument. Germany’s greatest chance for victory entailed gaining a quick triumph on land by employing its well-trained army. A failure by the kaiser to obtain a rapid victory there would allow the Entente to succeed through endurance, largely because sea power would allow Britain to harness the globe’s resources while Germany found itself contained to a small geographic region of continental Europe.
Professor McCranie fully examines Mahan's expansive and rather surprising final thoughts such as above in his 2023 article "Mahan’s Theory and the Realities of the First World War—His Final Considerations on Sea Power, " which can be downloaded.
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