Plus ça change

U.S. naval power as extolled in 1921

“The United States does not want anything on earth not rightfully our own—no territories, no payment of tribute; but we want that which is righteously our own, and, by the eternal, we mean to have that.” (Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States of America.)

At the review of the Grand Fleet at Hampton Roads the other day, the breaking waves dashed high, and President Harding rode upon the crest of them, singing a song of sea-power. We can hardly blame the President for having felt uplifted. With submarines nosing up out of the ocean, and dirigibles hiding the sun; with sea-planes zooming past the Mayflower’s mast-head, and the continuous cannonading of the dreadnaughts fairly drowning the strains of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” it must have been a fine business altogether, and enough to upset anybody. Maybe Mr. Harding did not mean anything at all, then, when he addressed the following immortal words to the officers of the fleet: “The United States does not want anything on earth not rightfully our own—no territories, no payment of tribute; but we want that which is righteously our own, and, by the eternal, we mean to have that.” If this really does mean something, then, by the eternal, we should like to know what it is that is righteously our own, and is yet so much some one else’s that we have to have the biggest navy on earth to haul it home for us.

The Freeman Book; Geroid Tanquary Robinson, 2 May 1921.