John Paul Jones Quotes
...without a Respectable Navy, Alas America!
Jones, John Paul. Letter to Robert Morris. 17 Oct. 1776. Life and Correspondence of John Paul Jones, edited by Robert Charles Sands, D. Fanshaw, 1830, p. 50.
This quotation illustrates several historical differences of the past with today. To be a world superpower, one had to have a dominant navy. Yet that navy was, in Churchill’s concept, a defensive system. It could protect the nation from invasion, and its merchant ships on the seas, but a navy provided no threat to invade towns and villages in Europe or elsewhere. Germany and France in contrast, with their large armies could invade other nations and menace Europe and Asia. It also illustrates why the navy and the army were considered completely separate departments of government in that they had different functions. The early American government had a Navy Department and Secretary but no Secretary of the Army or standing army.
This quotation illustrates some of the interesting attitudes of early Americans. First, note the backhanded slap at a standing army. The navy was much preferred by early Americans as history had demonstrated that most republics had been destroyed by their own armies taking over in some “emergency” of time of “crisis.” This also helps explain why the army and navy were different departments of government—a tradition that lasted until after WWII. The two departments had totally different purposes and objectives and presented different potential dangers to the nation.
America’s oldest foreign policy problem has been freedom of the seas for American shipping. Since the end of WWII, the U. S. however performed this function—and pays for it—for the entire world with some minor exceptions.
There were few military thinkers at that time who would agree with Goebbels on this point.
This article reached America where the insult proved a patriotic rallying point.
The notion of America flexing its military muscles and intimidating other nations by sending a fleet of 16 battle ships around the world was not greeted enthusiastically by some. However in Japan, the reaction was totally positive. The Russo-Japanese War had been ended thanks to the mediation of Theodore Roosevelt (for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and America was a model for much of Japan’s modernization. 25 years later the Japanese would view America as an interfering, intimidating bully, curtailing their national aspirations and rights.
See {629350} for his reason that we had to have a strong navy.
He was referring to attacking the Barbary States. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640846}.
John Paul Jones was the United States' first well-known naval commander in the American Revolutionary War. He made many friends among U.S political elites (including John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin), as well as enemies (who accused him of piracy), and his actions in British waters during the Revolution earned him an international reputation which persists to this day. As such, he is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the American Navy" (a sobriquet he shares with John Barry and John Adams).
