To Man's Measure..
The United States Navy now has anempire all its own. Creating a strangeexception to the concept of empires inthe past, the Navy demands practicallynothing of its subjects except that theybe antiseptic and happy. In its benev-olence and total disinterestedness theNavy is Godlike.
The Navy 's new empire is in theMicronesian Islands of the westernPacific Ocean ; it is called the Trust Territory of the Pacific, and the Navy administers it for the government un-der a mandate from the TrusteeshipCouncil of the United Nations.
We are in the Marianas , the Carol-ines, and the Marshalls for strategicreasons alone, and for no economicpurposes whatsoever, and it must beadmitted that it was nice of the UnitedNations to give our presence the statusof trusteeship. We announced that wewere in Micronesia to stay; the UnitedNations said that was fine.
But here is no case of exploitation.We want neat, trim naval bases, withgardens round them and a quiet popu-lation outside the gardens. We bringdollars, and a mild amount of politicalreorganization. There is nothing what-ever that we want to take away in ex-change.
The islands are so far away- Palau is 5,751 miles from San Francisco-that only those Americans who threwthe Japanese out of them would re-
member them now. The Navy remem-bers them very well.
Behind all the shifts in Americanforeign policy, the lapses in interest, thesudden excitements, the Navy is oneAmerican institution that thinks intechnical terms, has enduring aims, im-mense persistence, and more influencethan is generally suspected. That is whythe Navy now has its ninety- six islandsin Micronesia , scattered over three mil-lion square miles of ocean. It also hassome fifty thousand subjects.
It is a little hard to gauge the benefitsderived by the natives from their pre-vious contact with western or Orientalcivilizations. Spain was first in thearea, in 1668.( Magellan had discov-ered the Marianas in 1521.) Spain soldthem to Germany in 1899. Japanese forces occupied them in 1914. Theystayed until we threw them out.
Spain brought Catholicism ; Ger many , with help from free- lance mis-sionaries, brought Protestantism ; theJapanese simply brought, in the vulgarsense, the fear of God .
The Spanish never were interestedin commerce; here was no gold to grab,no military power to crush. They didnot greatly disturb the social habits ofthe islanders. They merely gratified thetaste they then had for settling all overthe globe. The Germans were method-ical; they set up trading companies forcopra, and the personnel of these com-panies took the place of the civil ser-vants they otherwise would have had topay. The Japanese were after what weare after today- military bases- butthey wanted chiefly to colonize. By1940 there were eighty- four thousand