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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: They might invent. They might lay waste their cities and retire
inland, for they can subsist entirely on their own produce.
Meantime, in a war waged the only way it could be waged by an
unscrupulous Power, their coast cities and their dock-yards would
be ashes. They could construct their navy inland if they liked,
but you could never bring a ship down to the water-ways, as they
stand now.
They could not, with an ordinary water patrol, despatch one
regiment of men six miles across the seas. There would be about
five million excessively angry, armed men pent up within American
limits. These men would require ships to get themselves afloat.
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