Our own great naval historian, Alfred Thayer Mahan, makes an observation (in his book The Problem of Asia) of great present-day interest. He notes the ultimate necessity of taking the long view regarding the entry of China into full participation in world affairs, in which he advises watchfulness “to see that nothing unduly sudden or extreme occurs— nothing revolutionary; that there shall be gained time, the great element of safety, by the operation of which transformation is retarded into evolution.” He compares this need with the entry of the Teutonic genius into the Roman civilization, “not by sudden convulsion, but through a protracted process of development. . . . That the result was thus happily protracted was due to the foresight— the long view — of Caesar; partial, doubtless, even in so great a man, but seeing nevertheless unto conviction, from afar, the dangers that the conditions foretold, and turning his attention with the intuition of genius to the provision of a barrier, by advancing the borders and consolidating the outworks of the Roman state, until positions were held which should insure delay—the primary, although not the final, aim of all defensive dispositions.”
This was what Caesar foresaw, however dimly, as Gaul’s relation to Rome’s future; the Western world owes a notable debt to that postponement of the Dark Ages for a handful of centuries which was the result of his efforts. Today the people of the United States, advancing their borders across the Pacific and consolidating their outworks, face problems not dissimilar, with no clearer vision than Caesar’s twenty centuries ago—but, we may hope, with instincts equally serviceable. We too must think, if not of the problems of empire then of the no less vexatious problems of world responsibilities without imperial authority. No American can read General Fuller’s lively account of Caesar’s career without making some constructive comparisons in his own mind.
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