Whether or not it was on this principle that the Japanese conceived the war

from the outset matters little. The main considerations are that with so

favourable a territorial object as Korea limited war was possible in its

most formidable shape, that the war did in fact develop on limited lines,

and that it was entirely successful. Without waiting to secure the command

of the sea, Japan opened by a surprise seizure of Seoul, and then under

cover of minor operations of the fleet proceeded to complete her occupation

of Korea. As she faced the second stage, that of making good the defence of

her conquest, the admirable nature of her geographical object was further

displayed. The theoretical weakness of limited war at this point is the

arrest of your offensive action. But in this case such arrest was neither

necessary nor possible, and for these reasons. To render the conquest

secure not only must the Korean frontier be made inviolable, but Korea must

be permanently isolated by sea. This involved the destruction of the

Russian fleet, and this in its turn entailed the reduction of Port Arthur

by military means. Here, then, in the second stage Japan found herself

committed to two lines of operation with two distinct objectives, Port

Arthur and the Russian army that was slowly concentrating in Manchuria--a

thoroughly vicious situation. So fortunate, however, was the geographical

conformation of the theatre that by promptitude and the bold use of an

uncommanded sea it could be reduced to something far more correct. By

continuing the advance of the Korean army into Manchuria and landing

another force between it and the Port Arthur army the three corps could be

concentrated and the vicious separation of the lines of operations turned

to good account. They could be combined in such a way as to threaten an

enveloping counter-attack on Liao-yang before the Russian offensive

concentration could be completed. Not only was Liao-yang the Russian point

of concentration, but it also was a sound position both for defending Korea

and covering the siege of Port Arthur. Once secured, it gave the Japanese

all the advantages of defence and forced the Russians to exhaust themselves

in offensive operations which were beyond their strength. Nor was it only

ashore that this advantage was gained. The success of the system, which

culminated in the fall of Port Arthur, went further still. Not only did it

make Japan relatively superior at sea, but it enabled her to assume a naval

defensive and so to force the final naval decision on Russia with every

advantage of time, place, and strength in her own favour.

By the battle of Tsushima the territorial object was completely isolated by

sea, and the position of Japan in Korea was rendered as impregnable as that

of Wellington at Torres Vedras. All that remained was to proceed to the

third stage and demonstrate to Russia that the acceptance of the situation

that had been set up was more to her advantage than the further attempt to

break it down. This the final advance to Mukden accomplished, and Japan

obtained her end very far short of having overthrown her enemy. The

offensive power of Russia had never been so strong, while that of Japan was

almost if not quite exhausted.

Approached in this way, the Far Eastern struggle is seen to develop on the

same lines as all our great maritime wars of the past, which continental

strategists have so persistently excluded from their field of study. It

presents the normal three phases--the initial offensive movement to seize

the territorial object, the secondary phase, which forces an attenuated

offensive on the enemy, and the final stage of pressure, in which there is

a return to the offensive "according," as Jomini puts it, "to circumstances

and your relative force in order to obtain the cession desired."

It must not of course be asked that these phases shall be always clearly

defined. Strategical analysis can never give exact results. It aims only at

approximations, at groupings which will serve to guide but will always

leave much to the judgment. The three phases in the Russo-Japanese War,

though unusually well defined, continually overlapped. It must be so; for

in war the effect of an operation is never confined to the limits of its

immediate or primary intention. Thus the occupation of Korea had the

secondary defensive effect of covering the home country, while the initial

blow which Admiral Togo delivered at Port Arthur to cover the primary

offensive movement proved, by the demoralisation it caused in the Russian

fleet, to be a distinct step in the secondary phase of isolating the

conquest. In the later stages of the war the line between what was

essential to set up the second phase of perfecting the isolation and the

third phase of general pressure seems to have grown very nebulous.

It was at this stage that the Japanese strategy has been most severely

criticised, and it was just here they seem to have lost hold of the

conception of a limited war, if in fact they had ever securely grasped the

conception as the elder Pitt understood it. It has been argued that in

their eagerness to deal a blow at the enemy's main army they neglected to

devote sufficient force to reduce Port Arthur, an essential step to

complete the second phase. Whether or not the exigencies of the case

rendered such distribution of force inevitable or whether it was due to

miscalculation of difficulties, the result was a most costly set-back. For

not only did it entail a vast loss of time and life at Port Arthur itself,

but when the sortie of the Russian fleet in June brought home to them their

error, the offensive movement on Liao-yang had to be delayed, and the

opportunity passed for a decisive counter-stroke at the enemy's

concentration ashore.

This misfortune, which was to cost the Japanese so dear, may perhaps be

attributed at least in part to the continental influences under which their

army had been trained. We at least can trace the unlimited outlook in the

pages of the German Staff history. In dealing with the Japanese plan of

operations it is assumed that the occupation of Korea and the isolation of

Port Arthur were but preliminaries to a concentric advance on Liao-yang,

"which was kept in view as the first objective of the operations on land."

But surely on every theory of the war the first objective of the Japanese

on land was Seoul, where they expected to have to fight their first

important action against troops advancing from the Yalu; and surely their

second was Port Arthur, with its fleet and arsenal, which they expected to

reduce with little more difficulty than they had met with ten years before

against the Chinese. Such at least was the actual progression of events,

and a criticism which regards operations of such magnitude and ultimate

importance as mere incidents of strategic deployment is only to be

explained by the domination of the Napoleonic idea of war, against the

universal application of which Clausewitz so solemnly protested. It is the

work of men who have a natural difficulty in conceiving a war plan that

does not culminate in a Jena or a Sedan. It is a view surely which is the

child of theory, bearing no relation to the actuality of the war in

question and affording no explanation of its ultimate success. The truth

is, that so long as the Japanese acted on the principles of limited war, as

laid down by Clausewitz and Jomini and plainly deducible from our own rich

experience, they progressed beyond all their expectations, but so soon as

they departed from them and suffered themselves to be confused with

continental theories they were surprised by unaccountable failure.

The expression "Limited war" is no doubt not entirely happy. Yet no other

has been found to condense the ideas of limited object and limited

interest, which are its special characteristics. Still if the above example

be kept in mind as a typical case, the meaning of the term will not be

mistaken. It only remains to emphasise one important point. The fact that

the doctrine of limited war traverses the current belief that our primary

objective must always be the enemy's armed forces is liable to carry with

it a false inference that it also rejects the corollary that war means the

use of battles. Nothing is further from the conception. Whatever the form

of war, there is no likelihood of our ever going back to the old fallacy of

attempting to decide wars by manoeuvres. All forms alike demand the use of

battles. By our fundamental theory war is always "a continuation of

political intercourse, in which fighting is substituted for writing notes."

However great the controlling influence of the political object, it must

never obscure the fact that it is by fighting we have to gain our end.

It is the more necessary to insist on this point, for the idea of making a

piece of territory your object is liable to be confused with the older

method of conducting war, in which armies were content to manoeuvre for

strategical positions, and a battle came almost to be regarded as a mark of

bad generalship. With such parading limited war has nothing to do. Its

conduct differs only from that of unlimited war in that instead of having

to destroy our enemy's whole power of resistance, we need only overthrow so

much of his active force as he is able or willing to bring to bear in order

to prevent or terminate our occupation of the territorial object.

The first consideration, then, in entering on such a war is to endeavour to

determine what the force will amount to. It will depend, firstly, on the

importance the enemy attaches to the limited object, coupled with the

nature and extent of his preoccupations elsewhere, and, secondly, it will

depend upon the natural difficulties of his lines of communication and the

extent to which we can increase those difficulties by our conduct of the

initial operations. In favourable circumstances therefore (and here lies

the great value of the limited form) we are able to control the amount of

force we shall have to encounter. The most favourable circumstances and the

only circumstances by which we ourselves can profit are such as permit the

more or less complete isolation of the object by naval action, and such

isolation can never be established until we have entirely overthrown the

enemy's naval forces.

Here, then, we enter the field of naval strategy. We can now leave behind

us the theory of war in general and, in order to pave the way to our final

conclusions, devote our attention to the theory of naval warfare in

particular.

* * * * *

PART TWO

THEORY OF NAVAL WAR

* * * * *

CHAPTER ONE

THEORY OF THE OBJECT--

COMMAND OF THE SEA

* * * * *

The object of naval warfare must always be directly or indirectly either to

secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it.

The second part of the proposition should be noted with special care in

order to exclude a habit of thought, which is one of the commonest sources

of error in naval speculation. That error is the very general assumption

that if one belligerent loses the command of the sea it passes at once to

the other belligerent. The most cursory study of naval history is enough to

reveal the falseness of such an assumption. It tells us that the most

common situation in naval war is that neither side has the command; that

the normal position is not a commanded sea, but an uncommanded sea. The

mere assertion, which no one denies, that the object of naval warfare is to

get command of the sea actually connotes the proposition that the command

is normally in dispute. It is this state of dispute with which naval

strategy is most nearly concerned, for when the command is lost or won pure

naval strategy comes to an end.

This truth is so obvious that it would scarcely be worth mentioning were it

not for the constant recurrence of such phrases as: "If England were to

lose command of the sea, it would be all over with her." The fallacy of the

idea is that it ignores the power of the strategical defensive. It assumes

that if in the face of some extraordinary hostile coalition or through some

extraordinary mischance we found ourselves without sufficient strength to

keep the command, we should therefore be too weak to prevent the enemy

getting it--a negation of the whole theory of war, which at least requires

further support than it ever receives.

And not only is this assumption a negation of theory; it is a negation both

of practical experience and of the expressed opinion of our greatest

masters. We ourselves have used the defensive at sea with success, as under

William the Third and in the War of American Independence, while in our

long wars with France she habitually used it in such a way that sometimes

for years, though we had a substantial preponderance, we could not get

command, and for years were unable to carry out our war plan without

serious interruption from her fleet.

So far from the defensive being a negligible factor at sea, or even the

mere pestilent heresy it is generally represented, it is of course inherent

in all war, and, as we have seen, the paramount questions of strategy both

at sea and on land turn on the relative possibilities of offensive and

defensive, and upon the relative proportions in which each should enter

into our plan of war. At sea the most powerful and aggressively-minded

belligerent can no more avoid his alternating periods of defence, which

result from inevitable arrests of offensive action, than they can be

avoided on land. The defensive, then, has to be considered; but before we

are in a position to do so with profit, we have to proceed with our

analysis of the phrase, "Command of the Sea," and ascertain exactly what it

is we mean by it in war.

In the first place, "Command of the Sea" is not identical in its

strategical conditions with the conquest of territory. You cannot argue

from the one to the other, as has been too commonly done. Such phrases as

the "Conquest of water territory" and "Making the enemy's coast our

frontier" had their use and meaning in the mouths of those who framed them,

but they are really little but rhetorical expressions founded on false

analogy, and false analogy is not a secure basis for a theory of war.

The analogy is false for two reasons, both of which enter materially into

the conduct of naval war. You cannot conquer sea because it is not

susceptible of ownership, at least outside territorial waters. You cannot,

as lawyers say, "reduce it into possession," because you cannot exclude

neutrals from it as you can from territory you conquer. In the second

place, you cannot subsist your armed force upon it as you can upon enemy's

territory. Clearly, then, to make deductions from an assumption that

command of the sea is analogous to conquest of territory is unscientific,

and certain to lead to error.

The only safe method is to inquire what it is we can secure for ourselves,

and what it is we can deny the enemy by command of the sea. Now, if we

exclude fishery rights, which are irrelevant to the present matter, the

only right we or our enemy can have on the sea is the right of passage; in

other words, the only positive value which the high seas have for national

life is as a means of communication. For the active life of a nation such

means may stand for much or it may stand for little, but to every maritime

State it has some value. Consequently by denying an enemy this means of

passage we check the movement of his national life at sea in the same kind

of way that we check it on land by occupying his territory. So far the

analogy holds good, but no further.

So much for the positive value which the sea has in national life. It has

also a negative value. For not only is it a means of communication, but,

unlike the means of communication ashore, it is also a barrier. By winning

command of the sea we remove that barrier from our own path, thereby

placing ourselves in position to exert direct military pressure upon the

national life of our enemy ashore, while at the same time we solidify it

against him and prevent his exerting direct military pressure upon

ourselves.

Command of the sea, therefore, means nothing but the control of maritime

communications, whether for commercial or military purposes. The object of

naval warfare is the control of communications, and not, as in land

warfare, the conquest of territory. The difference is fundamental. True, it

is rightly said that strategy ashore is mainly a question of

communications, but they are communications in another sense. The phrase

refers to the communications of the army alone, and not to the wider

communications which are part of the life of the nation.

But on land also there are communications of a kind which are essential to

national life--the internal communications which connect the points of

distribution. Here again we touch an analogy between the two kinds of war.

Land warfare, as the most devoted adherents of the modern view admit,

cannot attain its end by military victories alone. The destruction of your

enemy's forces will not avail for certain unless you have in reserve

sufficient force to complete the occupation of his inland communications

and principal points of distribution. This power is the real fruit of

victory, the power to strangle the whole national life. It is not until

this is done that a high-spirited nation, whose whole heart is in the war,

will consent to make peace and do your will. It is precisely in the same

way that the command of the sea works towards peace, though of course in a

far less coercive manner, against a continental State. By occupying her

maritime communications and closing the points of distribution in which

they terminate we destroy the national life afloat, and thereby check the

vitality of that life ashore so far as the one is dependent on the other.

Thus we see that so long as we retain the power and right to stop maritime

communications, the analogy between command of the sea and the conquest of

territory is in this aspect very close. And the analogy is of the utmost

practical importance, for on it turns the most burning question of maritime

war, which it will be well to deal with in this place.

It is obvious that if the object and end of naval warfare is the control of

communications it must carry with it the right to forbid, if we can, the

passage of both public and private property upon the sea. Now the only

means we have of enforcing such control of commercial communications at sea

is in the last resort the capture or destruction of sea-borne property.

Such capture or destruction is the penalty which we impose upon our enemy

for attempting to use the communications of which he does not hold the

control. In the language of jurisprudence, it is the ultimate sanction of

the interdict which we are seeking to enforce. The current term "Commerce

destruction" is not in fact a logical expression of the strategical idea.

To make the position clear we should say "Commerce prevention."

The methods of this "Commerce prevention" have no more connection with the

old and barbarous idea of plunder and reprisal than orderly requisitions

ashore have with the old idea of plunder and ravaging. No form of war

indeed causes so little human suffering as the capture of property at sea.

It is more akin to process of law, such as distress for rent, or execution

of judgment, or arrest of a ship, than to a military operation. Once, it is

true, it was not so. In the days of privateers it was accompanied too

often, and particularly in the Mediterranean and the West Indies, with

lamentable cruelty and lawlessness, and the existence of such abuses was

the real reason for the general agreement to the Declaration of Paris by

which privateering was abolished.

But it was not the only reason. The idea of privateering was a survival of

a primitive and unscientific conception of war, which was governed mainly

by a general notion of doing your enemy as much damage as possible and

making reprisal for wrongs he had done you. To the same class of ideas

belonged the practice of plunder and ravaging ashore. But neither of these

methods of war was abolished for humanitarian reasons. They disappeared

indeed as a general practice before the world had begun to talk of

humanity. They were abolished because war became more scientific. The right

to plunder and ravage was not denied. But plunder was found to demoralise

your troops and unfit them for fighting, and ravaging proved to be a less

powerful means of coercing your enemy than exploiting the occupied country

by means of regular requisitions for the supply of your own army and the

increase of its offensive range. In short, the reform arose from a desire

to husband your enemy's resources for your own use instead of wantonly

wasting them.

In a similar way privateering always had a debilitating effect upon our own

regular force. It greatly increased the difficulty of manning the navy, and

the occasional large profits had a demoralising influence on detached

cruiser commanders. It tended to keep alive the mediaeval corsair spirit at

the expense of the modern military spirit which made for direct operations

against the enemy's armed forces. It was inevitable that as the new

movement of opinion gathered force it should carry with it a conviction

that for operating against sea-borne trade sporadic attack could never be

so efficient as an organised system of operations to secure a real

strategical control of the enemy's maritime communications. A riper and

sounder view of war revealed that what may be called tactical commercial

blockade--that is, the blockade of ports--could be extended to and

supplemented by a strategical blockade of the great trade routes. In moral

principle there is no difference between the two. Admit the principle of

tactical or close blockade, and as between belligerents you cannot condemn

the principle of strategical or distant blockade. Except in their effect

upon neutrals, there is no juridical difference between the two.

Why indeed should this humane yet drastic process of war be rejected at sea

if the same thing is permitted on land? If on land you allow contributions

and requisitions, if you permit the occupation of towns, ports, and inland

communications, without which no conquest is complete and no effective war

possible, why should you refuse similar procedure at sea where it causes

far less individual suffering? If you refuse the right of controlling

communications at sea, you must also refuse the right on land. If you admit

the right of contributions on land, you must admit the right of capture at

sea. Otherwise you will permit to military Powers the extreme rights of war

and leave to the maritime Powers no effective rights at all. Their ultimate

argument would be gone.

In so far as the idea of abolishing private capture at sea is humanitarian,

and in so far as it rests on a belief that it would strengthen our position

as a commercial maritime State, let it be honourably dealt with. But so far

as its advocates have as yet expressed themselves, the proposal appears to

be based on two fallacies. One is, that you can avoid attack by depriving

yourself of the power of offence and resting on defence alone, and the

other, the idea that war consists entirely of battles between armies or

fleets. It ignores the fundamental fact that battles are only the means of

enabling you to do that which really brings wars to an end-that is, to

exert pressure on the citizens and their collective life. "After shattering

the hostile main army," says Von der Goltz, "we still have the forcing of a

peace as a separate and, in certain circumstances, a more difficult task

... to make the enemy's country feel the burdens of war with such weight

that the desire for peace will prevail. This is the point in which Napoleon

failed.... It may be necessary to seize the harbours, commercial centres,

important lines of traffic, fortifications and arsenals, in other words,

all important property necessary to the existence of the people and army."

If, then, we are deprived of the right to use analogous means at sea, the

object for which we fight battles almost ceases to exist. Defeat the

enemy's fleets as we may, he will be but little the worse. We shall have

opened the way for invasion, but any of the great continental Powers can

laugh at our attempts to invade single-handed. If we cannot reap the

harvest of our success by deadening his national activities at sea, the

only legitimate means of pressure within our strength will be denied us.

Our fleet, if it would proceed with such secondary operations as are

essential for forcing a peace, will be driven to such barbarous expedients

as the bombardment of seaport towns and destructive raids upon the hostile

coasts.

If the means of pressure which follow successful fighting were abolished

both on land and sea there would be this argument in favour of the change,

that it would mean perhaps for civilised States the entire cessation of

war; for war would become so impotent, that no one would care to engage in

it. It would be an affair between regular armies and fleets, with which the

people had little concern. International quarrels would tend to take the

form of the mediaeval private disputes which were settled by champions in

trial by battle, an absurdity which led rapidly to the domination of purely

legal procedure. If international quarrels could go the same way, humanity

would have advanced a long stride. But the world is scarcely ripe for such

a revolution. Meanwhile to abolish the right of interference with the flow

of private property at sea without abolishing the corresponding right

ashore would only defeat the ends of humanitarians. The great deterrent,

the most powerful check on war, would be gone. It is commerce and finance

which now more than ever control or check the foreign policy of nations. If

commerce and finance stand to lose by war, their influence for a peaceful

solution will be great; and so long as the right of private capture at sea

exists, they stand to lose in every maritime war immediately and inevitably

whatever the ultimate result may be. Abolish the right, and this deterrent

disappears; nay, they will even stand to win immediate gains owing to the

sudden expansion of Government expenditure which the hostilities will

entail, and the expansion of sea commerce which the needs of the armed

forces will create. Any such losses as maritime warfare under existing

conditions must immediately inflict will be remote if interference with

property is confined to the land. They will never indeed be serious except

in the case of complete defeat, and no one enters upon war expecting

defeat. It is in the hope of victory and gain that aggressive wars are

born. The fear of quick and certain loss is their surest preventive.

Humanity, then, will surely beware how in a too hasty pursuit of peaceful

ideals it lets drop the best weapon it has for scotching the evil it has as

yet no power to kill.

In what follows, therefore, it is intended to regard the right of private

capture at sea as still subsisting. Without it, indeed, naval warfare is

almost inconceivable, and in any case no one has any experience of such a

truncated method of war on which profitable study can be founded.

The primary method, then, in which we use victory or preponderance at sea

and bring it to bear on the enemy's population to secure peace, is by the

capture or destruction of the enemy's property, whether public or private.

But in comparing the process with the analogous occupation of territory and

the levying of contributions and requisitions we have to observe a marked

difference. Both processes are what may be called economic pressure. But

ashore the economic pressure can only be exerted as the consequence of

victory or acquired domination by military success. At sea the process

begins at once. Indeed, more often than not, the first act of hostility in

maritime wars has been the capture of private property at sea. In a sense

this is also true ashore. The first step of an invader after crossing the

frontier will be to control to a less or greater extent such private

property as he is able to use for his purposes. But such interference with

private property is essentially a military act, and does not belong to the

secondary phase of economic pressure. At sea it does, and the reason why

this should be so lies in certain fundamental differences between land and

sea warfare which are implicit in the communication theory of naval war.

To elucidate the point, it must be repeated that maritime communications,

which are the root of the idea of command of the sea, are not analogous to

military communications in the ordinary use of the term. Military

communications refer solely to the army's lines of supply and retreat.

Maritime communications have a wider meaning. Though in effect embracing

the lines of fleet supply, they correspond in strategical values not to

military lines of supply, but to those internal lines of communication by

which the flow of national life is maintained ashore. Consequently maritime

communications are on a wholly different footing from land communications.

At sea the communications are, for the most part, common to both

belligerents, whereas ashore each possesses his own in his own territory.

The strategical effect is of far-reaching importance, for it means that at

sea strategical offence and defence tend to merge in a way that is unknown

ashore. Since maritime communications are common, we as a rule cannot

attack those of the enemy without defending our own. In military operations

the converse is the rule. Normally, an attack on our enemy's communications

tends to expose their own.

The theory of common communications will become clear by taking an example.

In our wars with France our communications with the Mediterranean, India,

and America ran down from the Channel mouth past Finisterre and St.

Vincent; and those of France, at least from her Atlantic ports, were

identical for almost their entire distance. In our wars with the Dutch the

identity was even closer. Even in the case of Spain, her great trade routes

followed the same lines as our own for the greater part of their extent.

Consequently the opening moves which we generally made to defend our trade

by the occupation of those lines placed us in a position to attack our

enemy's trade. The same situation arose even when our opening dispositions

were designed as defence against home invasion or against attacks upon our

colonies, for the positions our fleet had to take up to those ends always

lay on or about the terminal and focal points of trade routes. Whether our

immediate object were to bring the enemy's main fleets to action or to

exercise economic pressure, it made but little difference. If the enemy

were equally anxious to engage, it was at one of the terminal or focal

areas we were almost certain to get contact. If he wished to avoid a

decision, the best way to force him to action was to occupy his trade

routes at the same vital points.

Thus it comes about that, whereas on land the process of economic pressure,

at least in the modern conception of war, should only begin after decisive

victory, at sea it starts automatically from the first. Indeed such

pressure may be the only means of forcing the decision we seek, as will

appear more clearly when we come to deal with the other fundamental

difference between land and sea warfare.

Meanwhile we may note that at sea the use of economic pressure from the

commencement is justified for two reasons. The first is, as we have seen,

that it is an economy of means to use our defensive positions for attack

when attack does not vitiate those positions, and it will not vitiate them

if fleet cruisers operate with restraint. The second is, that interference

with the enemy's trade has two aspects. It is not only a means of exerting

the secondary economic pressure, it is also a primary means towards

overthrowing the enemy's power of resistance. Wars are not decided

exclusively by military and naval force. Finance is scarcely less

important. When other things are equal, it is the longer purse that wins.

It has even many times redressed an unfavourable balance of armed force and

given victory to the physically weaker Power. Anything, therefore, which we

are able to achieve towards crippling our enemy's finance is a direct step

to his overthrow, and the most effective means we can employ to this end

against a maritime State is to deny him the resources of seaborne trade.

It will be seen, therefore, that in naval warfare, however closely we may

concentrate our efforts on the destruction of our enemy's armed forces as

the direct means to his overthrow, it would be folly to stay our hands when

opportunities occur, as they will automatically, for undermining his

financial position on which the continued vigour of those armed forces so

largely depends. Thus the occupation of our enemy's sea communications and

the confiscatory operations it connotes are in a sense primary operations,

and not, as on land, secondary.

Such, then, are the abstract conclusions at which we arrive in our attempt

to analyse the idea of command of the sea and to give it precision as the

control of common communications. Their concrete value will appear when we

come to deal with the various forms which naval operations may take, such

as, "seeking out the enemy's fleet," blockade, attack and defence of trade,

and the safeguarding of combined expeditions. For the present it remains to

deal with the various kinds of sea command which flow from the

communication idea.

If the object of the command of the sea is to control communications, it is

obvious it may exist in various degrees. We may be able to control the

whole of the common communications as the result either of great initial

preponderance or of decisive victory. If we are not sufficiently strong to

do this, we may still be able to control some of the communications; that

is, our control may be general or local. Obvious as the point is, it needs

emphasising, because of a maxim that has become current that "the sea is

all one." Like other maxims of the kind, it conveys a truth with a trail of

error in its wake. The truth it contains seems to be simply this, that as a

rule local control can only avail us temporarily, for so long as the enemy

has a sufficient fleet anywhere, it is theoretically in his power to

overthrow our control of any special sea area.

It amounts indeed to little more than a rhetorical expression, used to

emphasise the high mobility of fleets as contrasted with that of armies and

the absence of physical obstacles to restrict that mobility. That this

vital feature of naval warfare should be consecrated in a maxim is well,

but when it is caricatured into a doctrine, as it sometimes is, that you

cannot move a battalion oversea till you have entirely overthrown your

enemy's fleet, it deserves gibbeting. It would be as wise to hold that in

war you must never risk anything.

It would seem to have been the evil influence of this travestied maxim

which had much to do with the cramped and timorous strategy of the

Americans in their late war with Spain. They had ample naval force to

secure such a local and temporary command of the Gulf of Mexico as to have

justified them at once in throwing all the troops they had ready into Cuba

to support the insurgents, in accordance with their war plan. They had also

sufficient strength to ensure that the communications with the

expeditionary force could not be interrupted permanently. And yet, because

the Spaniards had an undefeated fleet at sea somewhere, they hesitated, and

were nearly lost. The Japanese had no such illusions. Without having struck

a naval blow of any kind, and with a hostile fleet actually within the

theatre of operations, they started their essential military movement

oversea, content that though they might not be able to secure the control

of the line of passage, they were in a position to deny effective control

to the enemy. Our own history is full of such operations. There are cases

in plenty where the results promised by a successful military blow oversea,

before permanent command had been obtained, were great enough to justify a

risk which, like the Japanese, we knew how to minimise by judicious use of

our favourable geographical position, and of a certain system of

protection, which must be dealt with later.

For the purpose, then, of framing a plan of war or campaign, it must be

taken that command may exist in various states or degrees, each of which

has its special possibilities and limitations. It may be general or local,

and it may be permanent or temporary. General command may be permanent or

temporary, but mere local command, except in very favourable geographical

conditions, should scarcely ever be regarded as more than temporary, since

normally it is always liable to interruption from other theatres so long as

the enemy possesses an effective naval force.

Finally, it has to be noted that even permanent general command can never

in practice be absolute. No degree of naval superiority can ensure our

communications against sporadic attack from detached cruisers, or even

raiding squadrons if they be boldly led and are prepared to risk

destruction. Even after Hawke's decisive victory at Quiberon had completed

the overthrow of the enemy's sea forces, a British transport was captured

between Cork and Portsmouth, and an Indiaman in sight of the Lizard, while

Wellington's complaints in the Peninsula of the insecurity of his

communications are well known.[9] By general and permanent control we do

not mean that the enemy can do nothing, but that he cannot interfere with

our maritime trade and oversea operations so seriously as to affect the

issue of the war, and that he cannot carry on his own trade and operations

except at such risk and hazard as to remove them from the field of

practical strategy. In other words, it means that the enemy can no longer

attack our lines of passage and communication effectively, and that he

cannot use or defend his own.

[9] In justice to Wellington, it should be said that his complaints were

due to false reports that exaggerated a couple of insignificant captures

into a serious interruption.

To complete our equipment for appreciating any situation for which

operations have to be designed, it is necessary to remember that when the

command is in dispute the general conditions may give a stable or an

unstable equilibrium. It may be that the power of neither side

preponderates to any appreciable extent. It may also be that the

preponderance is with ourselves, or it may be that it lies with the enemy.

Such preponderance of course will not depend entirely on actual relative

strength, either physical or moral, but will be influenced by the

inter-relation of naval positions and the comparative convenience of their

situation in regard to the object of the war or campaign. By naval

positions we mean, firstly, naval bases and, secondly, the terminals of the

greater lines of communication or trade-routes and the focal areas where

they tend to converge, as at Finisterre, Gibraltar, Suez, the Cape,

Singapore, and many others.

Upon the degree and distribution of this preponderance will depend in a

general way the extent to which our plans will be governed by the idea of

defence or offence. Generally speaking, it will be to the advantage of the

preponderating side to seek a decision as quickly as possible in order to

terminate the state of dispute. Conversely, the weaker side will as a rule

seek to avoid or postpone a decision in hope of being able by minor

operations, the chances of war, or the development of fresh strength, to

turn the balance in its favour. Such was the line which France adopted

frequently in her wars with us, sometimes legitimately, but sometimes to

such an excess as seriously to demoralise her fleet. Her experience has led

to a hasty deduction that the defensive at sea for even a weaker Power is

an unmixed evil. Such a conclusion is foreign to the fundamental principles

of war. It is idle to exclude the use of an expectant attitude because in

itself it cannot lead to final success, and because if used to excess it

ends in demoralisation and the loss of will to attack. The misconception

appears to have arisen from insistence on the drawbacks of defence by

writers seeking to persuade their country to prepare in time of peace

sufficient naval strength to justify offence from the outset.

Having now determined the fundamental principles which underlie the idea of

Command of the Sea, we are in a position to consider the manner in which

fleets are constituted in order to fit them for their task.

* * * * *

CHAPTER TWO

* * * * *

THEORY OF THE MEANS--

THE CONSTITUTION OF FLEETS

* * * * *

In all eras of naval warfare fighting ships have exhibited a tendency to

differentiate into groups in accordance with the primary function each

class was designed to serve. These groupings or classifications are what is

meant by the constitution of a fleet. A threefold differentiation into

battleships, cruisers, and flotilla has so long dominated naval thought

that we have come to regard it as normal, and even essential. It may be so,

but such a classification has been by no means constant. Other ideas of

fleet constitution have not only existed, but have stood the test of war

for long periods, and it is unscientific and unsafe to ignore such facts if

we wish to arrive at sound doctrine.

The truth is, that the classes of ships which constitute a fleet are, or

ought to be, the expression in material of the strategical and tactical

ideas that prevail at any given time, and consequently they have varied not

only with the ideas, but also with the material in vogue. It may also be

said more broadly that they have varied with the theory of war, by which

more or less consciously naval thought was dominated. It is true that few

ages have formulated a theory of war, or even been clearly aware of its

influence; but nevertheless such theories have always existed, and even in

their most nebulous and intangible shapes seem to have exerted an

ascertainable influence on the constitution of fleets.

Going back to the dawn of modern times, we note that at the opening of the

sixteenth century, when galley warfare reached its culmination, the

constitution was threefold, bearing a superficial analogy to that which we

have come to regard as normal. There were the galeasses and heavy galleys

corresponding to our battleships, light galleys corresponding to our

cruisers, while the flotilla was represented by the small "frigates,"

"brigantines," and similar craft, which had no slave gang for propulsion,

but were rowed by the fighting crew. Such armed sailing ships as then

existed were regarded as auxiliaries, and formed a category apart, as

fireships and bomb-vessels did in the sailing period, and as mine-layers do

now. But the parallel must not be overstrained. The distinction of function

between the two classes of galleys was not so strongly marked as that

between the lighter craft and the galleys; that is to say, the scientific

differentiation between battleships and cruisers had not yet been so firmly

developed as it was destined to become in later times, and the smaller

galleys habitually took their place in the fighting line.

With the rise of the sailing vessel as the typical ship-of-war an entirely

new constitution made its appearance. The dominating classification became

twofold. It was a classification into vessels of subservient movement using

sails, and vessels of free movement using oars. It was on these lines that

our true Royal Navy was first organised by Henry the Eighth, an expert who,

in the science of war, was one of the most advanced masters in Europe. In

this constitution there appears even less conception than in that of the

galley period of a radical distinction between battleships and cruisers. As

Henry's fleet was originally designed, practically the whole of the

battleships were sailing vessels, though it is true that when the French

brought up galleys from the Mediterranean, he gave some of the smartest of

them oars. The constitution was in fact one of battleships and flotilla. Of

cruisers there were none as we understand them. Fleet scouting was done by

the "Row-barges" and newly introduced "Pinnaces" of the flotilla, while as

for commerce protection, merchant vessels had usually to look after

themselves, the larger ones being regularly armed for their own defence.

The influence of this twofold constitution continued long after the

conditions of its origin had passed away. In ever-lessening degree indeed

it may be said to have lasted for two hundred years. During the Dutch wars

of the seventeenth century, which finally established the dominant status

of the sailing warship, practically all true sailing vessels--that is,

vessels that had no auxiliary oar propulsion--took station in the line. The

"Frigates" of that time differed not at all from the "Great Ship" in their

functions, but only in their design. By the beginning of the eighteenth

century, however, the old tendency to a threefold organisation began to

reassert itself, but it was not till the middle of the century that the

process of development can be regarded as complete.

Down to the end of the War of the Austrian Succession--a period which is

usually deemed to be one of conspicuous depression in the naval art--the

classification of our larger sailing vessels was purely arbitrary. The

"Rates" (which had been introduced during the Dutch wars) bore no relation

to any philosophical conception of the complex duties of a fleet. In the

first rate were 100-gun ships; in the second, 90-gun ships--all

three-deckers. So far the system of rating was sound enough, but when we

come to the third rate we find it includes 80-gun ships, which were also of

three decks, while the bulk of the rest were 70-gun two-deckers. The fourth

rate was also composed of two-decked ships--weak battle-units of 60 and 50

guns--and this was far the largest class. All these four rates were classed

as ships-of-the-line. Below them came the fifth rates, which, though they

were used as cruisers, had no distinct class name. They differed indeed

only in degree from the ship-of-the-line, being all cramped two-deckers of

44 and 40 guns, and they must be regarded, in so far as they expressed any

logical idea of naval warfare, as the forerunners of the "Intermediate"

class, represented in the succeeding epochs by 50-gun ships, and in our own

time by armoured cruisers. The only true cruiser is found in the sixth

rate, which comprised small and weakly armed 20-gun ships, and between them

and the "Forties" there was nothing. Below them, but again without any

clear differentiation, came the unrated sloops representing the flotilla.

In such a system of rating there is no logical distinction either between

large and small battleships or between battleships and cruisers, or between

cruisers and flotilla. The only marked break in the gradual descent is that

between the 40-gun two-deckers and the 20-gun cruisers. As these latter

vessels as well as the sloops used sweeps for auxiliary propulsion, we are

forced to conclude that the only basis of the classification was that

adopted by Henry the Eighth, which, sound as it was in his time, had long

ceased to have any real relation to the actuality of naval war.

It was not till Anson's memorable administration that a scientific system

of rating was re-established and the fleet at last assumed the logical

constitution which it retained up to our own time. In the first two rates

appear the fleet flagship class, three-deckers of 100 and 90 guns

respectively. All smaller three-deckers are eliminated. In the next two

rates we have the rank and file of the battle-line, two-deckers of

increased size-namely, seventy-fours in the third rate, and sixty-fours in

the fourth. Here, however, is a slight break in the perfection of the

system, for the fourth rate also included 50-gun ships of two decks, which,

during the progress of the Seven Years' War, ceased to be regarded as

ships-of-the-line. War experience was eliminating small battleships, and

therewith it called for a type intermediate between battleships and

cruisers, with whose functions we shall have to deal directly. In practice

these units soon formed a rate by themselves, into which, by the same

tendency, 60-gun ships were destined to sink half a century later.

But most pregnant of all Anson's reforms was the introduction of the true

cruiser, no longer a small battleship, but a vessel specialised for its

logical functions, and distinct in design both from the battle rates and

the flotilla. Both 40-gun and 20-gun types were abolished, and in their

place appear two cruiser rates, and the fifth consisting of 32-gun true

frigates, and the sixth of 28-gun frigates, both completely divorced from

any battle function. Finally, after a very distinct gap, came the unrated

sloops and smaller craft, which formed the flotilla for coastwise and

inshore work, despatch service, and kindred duties.

The reforms of the great First Lord amounted in fact to a clearly

apprehended threefold constitution, in which the various groups were

frankly specialised in accordance with the functions each was expected to

perform. Specialisation, it will be observed, is the note of the process of

development. We have no longer an endeavour to adapt the fleet to its

multifarious duties by multiplying a comparatively weak nature of

fighting-ship, which could act in the line and yet be had in sufficient

numbers to protect commerce, but which was not well fitted for either

service. Instead we note a definite recognition of the principle that

battleships should be as powerful as possible, and that in order to permit

of their due development they must be relieved of their cruising functions

by a class of vessel specially adapted for the purpose. The question we

have to consider is, was this specialisation, which has asserted itself

down to our own times, in the true line of development? Was it, in fact, a

right expression of the needs which are indicated by the theory of naval

war?

By the theory of naval war it must be reiterated we mean nothing but an

enunciation of the fundamental principles which underlie all naval war.

Those principles, if we have determined them correctly, should be found

giving shape not only to strategy and tactics, but also to material,

whatever method and means of naval warfare may be in use at any given time.

Conversely, if we find strategy, tactics, or organisation exhibiting a

tendency to reproduce the same forms under widely differing conditions of

method and material, we should be able to show that those forms bear a

constant and definite relation to the principles which our theory

endeavours to express.

In the case of Anson's threefold organisation, the relation is not far to

seek, though it has become obscured by two maxims. The one is, that "the

command of the sea depends upon battleships," and the other, that "cruisers

are the eyes of the fleet." It is the inherent evil of maxims that they

tend to get stretched beyond their original meaning. Both of these express

a truth, but neither expresses the whole truth. On no theory of naval

warfare can we expect to command the sea with battleships, nor, on the

communication theory, can we regard the primary function of cruisers as

being to scout for a battle-fleet. It is perfectly true that the control

depends ultimately on the battle-fleet if control is disputed by a hostile

battle-fleet, as it usually is. It is also true that, so far as is

necessary to enable the battle-fleet to secure the control, we have to

furnish it with eyes from our cruiser force. But it does not follow that

this is the primary function of cruisers. The truth is, we have to withdraw

them from their primary function in order to do work for the battle-fleet

which it cannot do for itself.

Well established as is the "Eyes of the fleet" maxim, it would be very

difficult to show that scouting was ever regarded as the primary function

of cruisers by the highest authorities. In Nelson's practice at least their

paramount function was to exercise the control which he was securing with

his battle-squadron. Nothing is more familiar in naval history than his

incessant cry from the Mediterranean for more cruisers, but the

significance of that cry has become obscured. It was not that his cruisers

were not numerous in proportion to his battleships--they were usually

nearly double in number--but it was rather that he was so deeply convinced

of their true function, that he used them to exercise control to an extent

which sometimes reduced his fleet cruisers below the limit of bare

necessity. The result on a memorable occasion was the escape of the enemy's

battle-fleet, but the further result is equally important. It was that the

escape of that fleet did not deprive him of the control which he was

charged to maintain. His judgment may have been at fault, but the

strategical distribution of his force was consistent throughout the whole

period of his Mediterranean command. Judged by his record, no man ever

grasped more clearly than Nelson that the object of naval warfare was to

control communications, and if he found that he had not a sufficient number

of cruisers to exercise that control and to furnish eyes for his

battle-fleet as well, it was the battle-fleet that was made to suffer, and

surely this is at least the logical view. Had the French been ready to risk

settling the question of the control in a fleet action, it would have been

different. He would then have been right to sacrifice the exercise of

control for the time in order to make sure that the action should take

place and end decisively in his favour. But he knew they were not ready to

take such a risk, and he refused to permit a purely defensive attitude on

the part of the enemy to delude him from the special function with which he

had been charged.

If the object of naval warfare is to control communications, then the

fundamental requirement is the means of exercising that control. Logically,

therefore, if the enemy holds back from battle decision, we must relegate

the battle-fleet to a secondary position, for cruisers are the means of

exercising control; the battle-fleet is but the means of preventing their

being interfered with in their work. Put it to the test of actual practice.

In no case can we exercise control by battleships alone. Their

specialisation has rendered them unfit for the work, and has made them too

costly ever to be numerous enough. Even, therefore, if our enemy had no

battle-fleet we could not make control effective with battleships alone. We

should still require cruisers specialised for the work and in sufficient

numbers to cover the necessary ground. But the converse is not true. We

could exercise control with cruisers alone if the enemy had no battle-fleet

to interfere with them.

If, then, we seek a formula that will express the practical results of our

theory, it would take some such shape as this. On cruisers depends our

exercise of control; on the battle-fleet depends the security of control.

That is the logical sequence of ideas, and it shows us that the current

maxim is really the conclusion of a logical argument in which the initial

steps must not be ignored. The maxim that the command of the sea depends on

the battle-fleet is then perfectly sound so long as it is taken to include

all the other facts on which it hangs. The true function of the

battle-fleet is to protect cruisers and flotilla at their special work. The

best means of doing this is of course to destroy the enemy's power of

interference. The doctrine of destroying the enemy's armed forces as the

paramount object here reasserts itself, and reasserts itself so strongly as

to permit for most practical purposes the rough generalisation that the

command depends upon the battle-fleet.

Of what practical use then, it may be asked, is all this hairsplitting? Why

not leave untainted the conviction that our first and foremost business is

to crush the enemy's battle-fleet, and that to this end our whole effort

should be concentrated? The answer is to point to Nelson's dilemma. It was

a dilemma which, in the golden age of naval warfare, every admiral at sea

had had to solve for himself, and it was always one of the most difficult

details of every naval war plan. If we seek to ensure the effective action

of the battle-fleet by giving it a large proportion of cruisers, by so much

do we weaken the actual and continuous exercise of control. If we seek to

make that control effective by devoting to the service a large proportion

of cruisers, by so much do we prejudice our chance of getting contact with

and defeating the enemy's battle-fleet, which is the only means of

perfecting control.

The correct solution of the dilemma will of course depend upon the

conditions of each case--mainly upon the relative strength and activity of

the hostile battle-fleet and our enemy's probable intentions. But no matter

how completely we have tabulated all the relevant facts, we can never hope

to come to a sound conclusion upon them without a just appreciation of all

the elements which go to give command, and without the power of gauging

their relative importance. This, and this alone, will ultimately settle the

vital question of what proportion of our cruiser force it is right to

devote to the battle-fleet.

If the doctrine of cruiser control be correct, then every cruiser attached

to the battle-fleet is one withdrawn from its true function. Such

withdrawals are inevitable. A squadron of battleships is an imperfect

organism unable to do its work without cruiser assistance, and since the

performance of its work is essential to cruiser freedom, some cruisers must

be sacrificed. But in what proportion? If we confine ourselves to the view

that command depends on the battle-fleet, then we shall attach to it such a

number as its commander may deem necessary to make contact with the enemy

absolutely certain and to surround himself with an impenetrable screen. If

we knew the enemy was as anxious for a decision as ourselves, such a course

might be justified. But the normal condition is that if we desire a

decision it is because we have definite hopes of success, and consequently

the enemy will probably seek to avoid one on our terms. In practice this

means that if we have perfected our arrangements for the destruction of his

main fleet he will refuse to expose it till he sees a more favourable

opportunity. And what will be the result? He remains on the defensive, and

theoretically all the ensuing period of inaction tends to fall into his

scale. Without stirring from port his fleet is doing its work. The more

closely he induces us to concentrate our cruiser force in face of his

battle-fleet, the more he frees the sea for the circulation of his own

trade, and the more he exposes ours to cruiser raids.

Experience, then, and theory alike dictate that as a general principle

cruisers should be regarded as primarily concerned with the active

occupation of communications, and that withdrawals for fleet purposes

should be reduced to the furthest margin of reasonable risk. What that

margin should be can only be decided on the circumstances of each case as

it arises, and by the personal characteristics of the officers who are

responsible. Nelson's practice was to reduce fleet cruisers lower than

perhaps any other commander. So small indeed was the margin of efficiency

he left, that in the campaign already cited, when his judgment was ripest,

one stroke of ill-luck--a chance betrayal of his position by a

neutral--availed to deprive him of the decision he sought, and to let the

enemy's fleet escape.

We arrive, then, at this general conclusion. The object of naval warfare is

to control maritime communications. In order to exercise that control

effectively we must have a numerous class of vessels specially adapted for

pursuit. But their power of exercising control is in proportion to our

degree of command, that is, to our power of preventing their operations

being interfered with by the enemy. Their own power of resistance is in

inverse proportion to their power of exercising control; that is to say,

the more numerous and better adapted they are for preying on commerce and

transports, the weaker will be their individual fighting power. We cannot

give them as a whole the power of resisting disturbance without at the same

time reducing their power of exercising control. The accepted solution of

the difficulty during the great period of Anson's school was to provide

them with a covering force of battle units specially adapted for fighting.

But here arises a correlative difficulty. In so far as we give our battle

units fighting power we deny them scouting power, and scouting is essential

to their effective operation. The battle-fleet must have eyes. Now, vessels

adapted for control of communications are also well adapted for "eyes." It

becomes the practice, therefore, to withdraw from control operations a

sufficient number of units to enable the battle-fleet to cover effectively

the operations of those that remain.

Such were the broad principles on which the inevitable dilemma always had

to be solved, and on which Anson's organisation was based. They flow

naturally from the communication theory of maritime war, and it was this

theory which then dominated naval thought, as is apparent from the

technical use of such phrases as "lines of passage and communication." The

war plans of the great strategists from Anson and Barham can always be

resolved into these simple elements, and where we find the Admiralty grip

of them loosened, we have the confusion and quite unnecessary failures of

the War of American Independence. In that mismanaged contest the cardinal

mistake was that we suffered the enemy's battle-fleets to get upon and

occupy the vital lines of "passage and communication" without first

bringing them to action, an error partly due to the unreadiness of a weak

administration, and partly to an insufficient allocation of cruisers to

secure contact at the right places.

So far, then, the principles on which our naval supremacy was built up are

clear. For the enemies with whom we had to deal Anson's system was

admirably conceived. Both Spain and France held the communication theory so

strongly, that they were content to count as success the power of

continually disturbing our control without any real attempt to secure it

for themselves. To defeat such a policy Anson's constitution and the

strategy it connoted were thoroughly well adapted and easy to work. But it

by no means follows that his doctrine is the last word. Even in his own

time complications had begun to develop which tended to confuse the

precision of his system. By the culminating year of Trafalgar there were

indications that it was getting worn out, while the new methods and

material used by the Americans in 1812 made a serious rent in it. The

disturbances then inaugurated have continued to develop, and it is

necessary to consider how seriously they have confused the problem of fleet

constitution.

Firstly, there is the general recognition, always patent to ourselves, that

by far the most drastic, economical, and effective way of securing control

is to destroy the enemy's means of interfering with it. In our own service

this "overthrow" idea always tended to assert itself so strongly, that

occasionally the means became for a time more important than the end; that

is to say, circumstances were such that on occasions it was considered

advisable to sacrifice the exercise of control for a time in order quickly

and permanently to deprive the enemy of all means of interference. When

there was reasonable hope of the enemy risking a decision this

consideration tended to override all others; but when, as in Nelson's case

in the Mediterranean, the hope was small, the exercise of control tended to

take the paramount place.

The second complexity arose from the fact that however strong might be our

battleship cover, it is impossible for it absolutely to secure cruiser

control from disturbance by sporadic attack. Isolated heavy ships, taking

advantage of the chances of the sea, could elude even the strictest

blockade, and one such ship, if she succeeded in getting upon a line of

communication, might paralyse the operations of a number of weaker units.

They must either run or concentrate, and in either case the control was

broken. If it were a squadron of heavy ships that caused the disturbance,

the practice was to detach against it a division of the covering

battle-fleet. But it was obviously highly inconvenient and contrary to the

whole idea on which the constitution of the fleet was based to allow every

slight danger to cruiser control to loosen the cohesion of the main fleet.

It was necessary, then, to give cruiser lines some power of resistance.

This necessity once admitted, there seemed no point at which you could stop

increasing the fighting power of your cruisers, and sooner or later, unless

some means of checking the process were found, the distinction between

cruisers and battleships would practically disappear. Such a means was

found in what may be called the "Intermediate" ship. Frigates did indeed

continue to increase in size and fighting power throughout the remainder of

the sailing era, but it was not only in this manner that the power of

resistance was gained. The evil results of the movement were checked by the

introduction of a supporting ship, midway between frigates and true

ships-of-the-line. Sometimes classed as a battleship, and taking her place

in the line, the 50-gun ship came to be essentially a type for stiffening

cruiser squadrons. They most commonly appear as the flagships of cruiser

commodores, or stationed in terminal waters or at focal points where

sporadic raids were likely to fall and be most destructive. The strategical

effect of the presence of such a vessel in a cruiser line was to give the

whole line in some degree the strength of the intermediate ship; for any

hostile cruiser endeavouring to disturb the line was liable to have to deal

with the supporting ship, while if a frigate and a 50-gun ship got together

they were a match even for a small ship-of-the-line.

In sailing days, of course, this power of the supporting ship was weak

owing to the imperfection of the means of distant communication between

ships at sea and the non-existence of such means beyond extreme range of

vision. But as wireless telegraphy develops it is not unreasonable to

expect that the strategic value of the supporting or intermediate ship will

be found greater than it ever was in sailing days, and that for dealing

with sporadic disturbance the tendency will be for a cruiser line to

approximate more and more in power of resistance to that of its strongest

unit.

For fleet service a cruiser's power of resistance was hardly less valuable;

for though we speak of fleet cruisers as the eyes of the fleet, their

purpose is almost equally to blindfold the enemy. Their duty is not only to

disclose the movements of the enemy, but also to act as a screen to conceal

our own. The point was specially well marked in the blockades, where the

old 50-gun ships are almost always found with the inshore cruiser squadron,

preventing that squadron being forced by inquisitive frigates. Important as

this power of resistance in the screen was in the old days, it is tenfold

more important now, and the consequent difficulty of keeping cruisers

distinct from battleships is greater than ever. The reason for this is best

considered under the third and most serious cause of complexity.

The third cause is the acquisition by the flotilla of battle power. It is a

feature of naval warfare that is entirely new.[10] For all practical

purposes it was unknown until the full development of the mobile torpedo.

It is true that the fireship as originally conceived was regarded as having

something of the same power. During the Dutch wars--the heyday of its

vogue--its assigned power was on some occasions actually realised, as in

the burning of Lord Sandwich's flagship at the battle of Solebay, and the

destruction of the Spanish-Dutch fleet at Palermo by Duquesne. But as the

"nimbleness" of great-ships increased with the ripening of seamanship and

naval architecture, the fireship as a battle weapon became almost

negligible, while a fleet at anchor was found to be thoroughly defensible

by its own picket-boats. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century

indeed the occasions on which the fireship could be used for its special

purpose was regarded as highly exceptional, and though the type was

retained till the end of the century, its normal functions differed not at

all from those of the rest of the flotilla of which it then formed part.

[10] But not without analogous precedent. In the later Middle Ages small

craft were assigned the function in battle of trying to wedge up the

rudders of great ships or bore holes between wind and water. See Fighting

Instructions (Navy Record Society), p. 13.

Those functions, as we have seen, expressed the cruising idea in its purest

sense. It was numbers and mobility that determined flotilla types rather

than armament or capacity for sea-endurance. Their primary purpose was to

control communications in home and colonial waters against weakly armed

privateers. The type which these duties determined fitted them adequately

for the secondary purpose of inshore and despatch work with a fleet. It

was, moreover, on the ubiquity which their numbers gave them, and on their

power of dealing with unarmed or lightly armed vessels, that we relied for

our first line of defence against invasion. These latter duties were of

course exceptional, and the Navy List did not carry as a rule sufficient

numbers for the purpose. But a special value of the class was that it was

capable of rapid and almost indefinite expansion from the mercantile

marine. Anything that could carry a gun had its use, and during the period

of the Napoleonic threat the defence flotilla rose all told to considerably

over a thousand units.

Formidable and effective as was a flotilla of this type for the ends it was

designed to serve, it obviously in no way affected the security of a

battle-fleet. But so soon as the flotilla acquired battle power the whole

situation was changed, and the old principles of cruiser design and

distribution were torn to shreds. The battle-fleet became a more imperfect

organism than ever. Formerly it was only its offensive power that required

supplementing. The new condition meant that unaided it could no longer

ensure its own defence. It now required screening, not only from

observation, but also from flotilla attack. The theoretical weakness of an

arrested offensive received a practical and concrete illustration to a

degree that war had scarcely ever known. Our most dearly cherished

strategical traditions were shaken to the bottom. The "proper place" for

our battle-fleet had always been "on the enemy's coasts," and now that was

precisely where the enemy would be best pleased to see it. What was to be

done? So splendid a tradition could not lightly be laid aside, but the

attempt to preserve it involved us still deeper in heresy. The vital, most

difficult, and most absorbing problem has become not how to increase the

power of a battle-fleet for attack, which is a comparatively simple matter,

but how to defend it. As the offensive power of the flotilla developed, the

problem pressed with an almost bewildering intensity. With every increase

in the speed and sea-keeping power of torpedo craft, the problem of the

screen grew more exacting. To keep the hostile flotilla out of night range

the screen must be flung out wider and wider, and this meant more and more

cruisers withdrawn from their primary function. And not only this. The

screen must not only be far flung, but it must be made as far as possible

impenetrable. In other words, its own power of resistance must be increased

all along the line. Whole squadrons of armoured cruisers had to be attached

to battle-fleets to support the weaker members of the screen. The crying

need for this type of ship set up a rapid movement for increasing their

fighting power, and with it fell with equal rapidity the economic

possibility of giving the cruiser class its essential attribute of numbers.

As an inevitable result we find ourselves involved in an effort to restore

to the flotilla some of its old cruiser capacity, by endowing it with gun

armament, higher sea-keeping power, and facilities for distant

communication, all at the cost of specialisation and of greater economic

strain. Still judged by past experience, some means of increasing numbers

in the cruising types is essential, nor is it clear how it is possible to

secure that essential in the ranks of the true cruiser. No point has been

found at which it was possible to stop the tendency of this class of vessel

to increase in size and cost, or to recall it to the strategical position

it used to occupy. So insecure is the battle-squadron, so imperfect as a

self-contained weapon has it become, that its need has overridden the old

order of things, and the primary function of the cruising ship inclines to

be no longer the exercise of control under cover of the battle-fleet. The

battle-fleet now demands protection by the cruising ship, and what the

battle-fleet needs is held to be the first necessity.

Judged by the old naval practice, it is an anomalous position to have

reached. But the whole naval art has suffered a revolution beyond all

previous experience, and it is possible the old practice is no longer a

safe guide. Driven by the same necessities, every naval Power is following

the same course. It may be right, it may be wrong; no one at least but the

ignorant or hasty will venture to pass categorical judgment. The best we

can do is to endeavour to realise the situation to which, in spite of all

misgivings, we have been forced, and to determine its relations to the

developments of the past.

It is undoubtedly a difficult task. As we have seen, there have prevailed

in the constitution of fleets at various times several methods of

expressing the necessities of naval war. The present system differs from

them all. On the one hand, we have the fact that the latest developments of

cruiser power have finally obliterated all logical distinction between

cruisers and battleships, and we thus find ourselves hand in hand with the

fleet constitution of the old Dutch wars. On the other, however, we have

armoured cruisers organised in squadrons and attached to battle-fleets not

only for strategical purposes, but also with as yet undeveloped tactical

functions in battle. Here we come close to the latest development of the

sailing era, when "Advanced" or "Light" squadrons began to appear in the

organisation of battle-fleets.

The system arose towards the end of the eighteenth century in the

Mediterranean, where the conditions of control called for so wide a

dispersal of cruisers and so great a number of them, that it was almost

imperative for a battle-squadron in that sea to do much of its own

scouting. It was certainly for this purpose that the fastest and lightest

ships-of-the-line were formed into a separate unit, and the first

designation it received was that of "Observation Squadron." It remained for

Nelson to endeavour to endow it with a tactical function, but his idea was

never realised either by himself or any of his successors.

Side by side with this new element in the organisation of a battle-fleet,

which perhaps is best designated as a "Light Division," we have another

significant fact. Not only was it not always composed entirely of

ships-of-the-line, especially in the French service, but in 1805, the year

of the full development, we have Sir Richard Strachan using the heavy

frigates attached to his battle-squadron as a "Light Division," and giving

them a definite tactical function. The collapse of the French Navy put a

stop to further developments of either idea. Whither they would have led we

cannot tell. But it is impossible to shut our eyes to the indication of a

growing tendency towards the system that exists at present. It is difficult

at least to ignore the fact that both Nelson and Strachan in that

culminating year found the actuality of war calling for something for which

there was then no provision in the constitution of the fleet, but which it

does contain to-day. What Nelson felt for was a battleship of cruiser

speed. What Strachan desired was a cruiser fit to take a tactical part in a

fleet action. We have them both, but with what result? Anson's

specialisation of types has almost disappeared, and our present fleet

constitution is scarcely to be distinguished from that of the seventeenth

century. We retain the three-fold nomenclature, but the system itself has

really gone. Battleships grade into armoured cruisers, armoured cruisers

into protected cruisers. We can scarcely detect any real distinction except

a twofold one between vessels whose primary armament is the gun and vessels

whose primary armament is the torpedo. But even here the existence of a

type of cruiser designed to act with flotillas blurs the outline, while, as

we have seen, the larger units of the flotilla are grading up to cruiser

level.

We are thus face to face with a situation which has its closest counterpart

in the structureless fleets of the seventeenth century. That naval thought

should have so nearly retraced its steps in the course of two centuries is

curious enough, but it is still more striking when we consider how widely

the underlying causes differ in each case. The pressure which has forced

the present situation is due most obviously to two causes. One is the

excessive development of the "intermediate" ship originally devised for

purposes of commerce protection, and dictated by a menace which the

experience of the American War had taught us to respect. The other is the

introduction of the torpedo, and the consequent vulnerability of

battle-squadrons that are not securely screened. Nothing of the kind had

any influence on the fleet constitution of the seventeenth century. But if

we seek deeper, there is a less obvious consideration which for what it is

worth is too striking to be ignored.

It has been suggested above that the constitution of fleets appears to have

some more or less recognisable relation to the prevalent theory of war.

Now, amongst all our uncertainty we can assert with confidence that the

theory which holds the field at the present day bears the closest possible

resemblance to that which dominated the soldier-admirals of the Dutch war.

It was the "Overthrow" theory, the firm faith in the decisive action as the

key of all strategical problems. They carried it to sea with them from the

battlefields of the New Model Army, and the Dutch met them squarely. In the

first war at least their commerce had to give place to the exigencies of

throwing into the battle everything that could affect the issue. It is not

of course pretended that this attitude was dictated by any clearly

conceived theory of absolute war. It was due rather to the fact that, owing

to the relative geographical conditions, all attempts to guard trade

communications were useless without the command of the home waters in the

North Sea, and the truth received a clinching moral emphasis from the

British claim to the actual dominion of the Narrow Seas. It was, in fact, a

war which resembled rather the continental conditions of territorial

conquest than the naval procedure that characterised our rivalry with

France.

Is it then possible, however much we may resist the conclusion in loyalty

to the eighteenth-century tradition, that the rise of a new naval Power in

the room of Holland must bring us back to the drastic, if crude, methods of

the Dutch wars, and force us to tread under foot the nicer ingenuity of

Anson's system? Is it this which has tempted us to mistrust any type of

vessel which cannot be flung into the battle? The recurrence of a

formidable rival in the North Sea was certainly not the first cause of the

reaction. It began before that menace arose. Still it has undoubtedly

forced the pace, and even if it be not a cause, it may well be a

justification.

* * * * *

CHAPTER THREE

* * * * *

THEORY OF THE METHOD--

CONCENTRATION AND DISPERSAL OF FORCE

* * * * *

From the point of view of the method by which its ends are obtained,

strategy is often described as the art of assembling the utmost force at

the right time and place; and this method is called "Concentration."

At first sight the term seems simple and expressive enough, but on analysis

it will be found to include several distinct ideas, to all of which the

term is applied indifferently. The result is a source of some confusion,

even to the most lucid writers. "The word concentration," says one of the

most recent of them, "evokes the idea of a grouping of forces. We believe,

in fact, that we cannot make war without grouping ships into squadrons and

squadrons into fleets."[11] Here in one sentence the word hovers between

the formation of fleets and their strategical distribution. Similar

looseness will embarrass the student at every turn. At one time he will

find the word used to express the antithesis of division or dispersal of

force; at another, to express strategic deployment, which implies division

to a greater or less extent. He will find it used of the process of

assembling a force, as well as of the state of a force when the process is

complete. The truth is that the term, which is one of the most common and

most necessary in strategical discussion, has never acquired a very precise

meaning, and this lack of precision is one of the commonest causes of

conflicting opinion and questionable judgments. No strategical term indeed

calls more urgently for a clear determination of the ideas for which it

stands.

[11] Daveluy, _L'Esprit de la Guerre Navale_, vol. i, p. 27, note.

Military phraseology, from which the word is taken, employs "concentration"

in three senses. It is used for assembling the units of an army after they

have been mobilised. In this sense, concentration is mainly an

administrative process; logically, it means the complement of the process

of mobilisation, whereby the army realises its war organisation and becomes

ready to take the field. In a second sense it is used for the process of

moving the army when formed, or in process of formation, to the localities

from which operations can best begin. This is a true strategical stage, and

it culminates in what is known as strategic deployment. Finally, it is used

for the ultimate stage when the army so deployed is closed up upon a

definite line of operations in immediate readiness for tactical

deployment--gathered up, that is, to deal a concentrated blow.

Well as this terminology appears to serve on land, where the processes tend

to overlap, something more exact is required if we try to extend it to the

sea. Such extension magnifies the error at every step, and clear thinking

becomes difficult. Even if we set aside the first meaning, that is, the

final stage of mobilisation, we have still to deal with the two others

which, in a great measure, are mutually contradictory. The essential

distinction of strategic deployment, which contemplates dispersal with a

view to a choice of combinations, is flexibility and free movement. The

characteristic of an army massed for a blow is rigidity and restricted

mobility. In the one sense of concentration we contemplate a disposal of

force which will conceal our intention from the enemy and will permit us to

adapt our movements to the plan of operations he develops. In the other,

strategic concealment is at an end. We have made our choice, and are

committed to a definite operation. Clearly, then, if we would apply the

principles of land concentration to naval warfare it is desirable to settle

which of the two phases of an operation we mean by the term.

Which meaning, then, is most closely connected with the ordinary use of the

word? The dictionaries define concentration as "the state of being brought

to a common point or centre," and this coincides very exactly with the

stage of a war plan which intervenes between the completion of mobilisation

and the final massing or deployment for battle. It is an incomplete and

continuing act. Its ultimate consequence is the mass. It is a method of

securing mass at the right time and place. As we have seen, the essence of

the state of strategic deployment to which it leads is flexibility. In war

the choice of time and place will always be influenced by the enemy's

dispositions and movements, or by our desire to deal him an unexpected

blow. The merit of concentration, then, in this sense, is its power of

permitting us to form our mass in time at one of the greatest number of

different points where mass may be required.

It is for this stage that the more recent text-books incline to specialise

concentration--qualifying it as "strategic concentration." But even that

term scarcely meets the case, for the succeeding process of gathering up

the army into a position for tactical deployment is also a strategical

concentration. Some further specialisation is required. The analytical

difference between the two processes is that the first is an operation of

major strategy and the other of minor, and if they are to be fully

expressed, we have to weight ourselves with the terms "major and minor

strategic concentration."

Such cumbrous terminology is too forbidding to use. It serves only to mark

that the middle stage differs logically from the third as much as it does

from the first. In practice it comes to this. If we are going to use

concentration in its natural sense, we must regard it as something that

comes after complete mobilisation and stops short of the formation of mass.

In naval warfare at least this distinction between concentration and mass

is essential to clear appreciation. It leads us to conclusions that are of

the first importance. For instance, when once the mass is formed,

concealment and flexibility are at an end. The further, therefore, from the

formation of the ultimate mass we can stop the process of concentration the

better designed it will be. The less we are committed to any particular

mass, and the less we indicate what and where our mass is to be, the more

formidable our concentration. To concentration, therefore, the idea of

division is as essential as the idea of connection. It is this view of the

process which, at least for naval warfare, a weighty critical authority has

most strongly emphasised. "Such," he says, "is concentration reasonably

understood--not huddled together like a drove of sheep, but distributed

with a regard to a common purpose, and linked together by the effectual

energy of a single will."[12] Vessels in a state of concentration he

compares to a fan that opens and shuts. In this view concentration connotes

not a homogeneous body, but a compound organism controlled from a common

centre, and elastic enough to permit it to cover a wide field without

sacrificing the mutual support of its parts.

[12] Mahan, _War of 1812_, i, 316.

If, then, we exclude the meaning of mere assembling and the meaning of the

mass, we have left a signification which expresses coherent disposal about

a strategical centre, and this it will be seen gives for naval warfare just

the working definition that we want as the counterpart of strategic

deployment on land. The object of a naval concentration like that of

strategic deployment will be to cover the widest possible area, and to

preserve at the same time elastic cohesion, so as to secure rapid

condensations of any two or more of the parts of the organism, and in any

part of the area to be covered, at the will of the controlling mind; and

above all, a sure and rapid condensation of the whole at the strategical

centre.

Concentration of this nature, moreover, will be the expression of a war

plan which, while solidly based on an ultimate central mass, still

preserves the faculty of delivering or meeting minor attacks in any

direction. It will permit us to exercise control of the sea while we await

and work for the opportunity of a decision which shall permanently secure

control, and it will permit this without prejudicing our ability of

bringing the utmost force to bear when the moment for the decision arrives.

Concentration, in fact, implies a continual conflict between cohesion and

reach, and for practical purposes it is the right adjustment of those two

tensions--ever shifting in force--which constitutes the greater part of

practical strategy.

In naval warfare this concentration stage has a peculiar significance in

the development of a campaign, and at sea it is more clearly detached than

ashore. Owing to the vast size of modern armies, and the restricted nature

of their lines of movement, no less than their lower intrinsic mobility as

compared with fleets, the processes of assembly, concentration, and forming

the battle mass tend to grade into one another without any demarcation of

practical value. An army frequently reaches the stage of strategic

deployment direct from the mobilisation bases of its units, and on famous

occasions its only real concentration has taken place on the battlefield.

In Continental warfare, then, there is less difficulty in using the term to

cover all three processes. Their tendency is always to overlap. But at sea,

where communications are free and unrestricted by obstacles, and where

mobility is high, they are susceptible of sharper differentiation. The

normal course is for a fleet to assemble at a naval port; thence by a

distinct movement it proceeds to the strategical centre and reaches out in

divisions as required. The concentration about that centre may be very far

from a mass, and the final formation of the mass will bear no resemblance

to either of the previous movements, and will be quite distinct.

But free as a fleet is from the special fetters of an army, there always

exist at sea peculiar conditions of friction which clog its freedom of

disposition. One source of this friction is commerce protection. However

much our war plan may press for close concentration, the need of commerce

protection will always be calling for dispersal. The other source is the

peculiar freedom and secrecy of movements at sea. As the sea knows no roads

to limit or indicate our own lines of operation, so it tells little about

those of the enemy. The most distant and widely dispersed points must be

kept in view as possible objectives of the enemy. When we add to this that

two or more fleets can act in conjunction from widely separated bases with

far greater certainty than is possible for armies, it is obvious that the

variety of combinations is much higher at sea than on land, and variety of

combination is in constant opposition to the central mass.

It follows that so long as the enemy's fleet is divided, and thereby

retains various possibilities of either concentrated or sporadic action,

our distribution will be dictated by the need of being able to deal with a

variety of combinations and to protect a variety of objectives. Our

concentrations must therefore be kept as open and flexible as possible.

History accordingly shows us that the riper and fresher our experience and

the surer our grip of war, the looser were our concentrations. The idea of

massing, as a virtue in itself, is bred in peace and not in war. It

indicates the debilitating idea that in war we must seek rather to avoid

than to inflict defeat. True, advocates of the mass entrench themselves in

the plausible conception that their aim is to inflict crushing defeats. But

this too is an idea of peace. War has proved to the hilt that victories

have not only to be won, but worked for. They must be worked for by bold

strategical combinations, which as a rule entail at least apparent

dispersal. They can only be achieved by taking risks, and the greatest and

most effective of these is division.

The effect of prolonged peace has been to make "concentration" a kind of

shibboleth, so that the division of a fleet tends almost to be regarded as

a sure mark of bad leadership. Critics have come to lose sight of the old

war experience, that without division no strategical combinations are

possible. In truth they must be founded on division. Division is bad only

when it is pushed beyond the limits of well-knit deployment. It is

theoretically wrong to place a section of the fleet in such a position that

it may be prevented from falling back on its strategical centre when it is

encountered by a superior force. Such retreats of course can never be made

certain; they will always depend in some measure on the skill and resource

of the opposing commanders, and on the chances of weather: but risks must

be taken. If we risk nothing, we shall seldom perform anything. The great

leader is the man who can measure rightly to what breadth of deployment he

can stretch his concentration. This power of bold and sure adjustment

between cohesion and reach is indeed a supreme test of that judgment which

in the conduct of war takes the place of strategical theory.

In British naval history examples of faulty division are hard to find. The

case most commonly cited is an early one. It occurred in 1666 during the

second Dutch war. Monk and Rupert were in command of the main fleet, which

from its mobilisation bases in the Thames and at Spithead had concentrated

in the Downs. There they were awaiting De Ruyter's putting to sea in a

position from which they could deal with him whether his object was an

attack on the Thames or to join hands with the French. In this position a

rumour reached them that the Toulon squadron was on its way to the Channel

to co-operate with the Dutch. Upon this false intelligence the fleet was

divided, and Rupert went back to Portsmouth to cover that position in case

it might be the French objective. De Ruyter at once put to sea with a fleet

greatly superior to Monk's division. Monk, however, taking advantage of

thick weather that had supervened, surprised him at anchor, and believing

he had a sufficient tactical advantage attacked him impetuously. Meanwhile

the real situation became known. There was no French fleet, and Rupert was

recalled. He succeeded in rejoining Monk after his action with De Ruyter

had lasted three days. In the course of it Monk had been very severely

handled and forced to retreat to the Thames, and it was generally believed

that it was only the belated arrival of Rupert that saved us from a real

disaster.

The strategy in this case is usually condemned out of hand and made to bear

the entire blame of the reverse. Monk, who as a soldier had proved himself

one of the finest strategists of the time, is held to have blundered from

sheer ignorance of elementary principles. It is assumed that he should have

kept his fleet massed; but his critics fail to observe that at least in the

opinion of the time this would not have met the case. Had he kept the whole

to deal with De Ruyter, it is probable that De Ruyter would not have put to

sea, and it is certain Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight would have lain

open to the French had they come. If he had moved his mass to deal with the

French, he would have exposed the Thames to De Ruyter. It was a situation

that could not be solved by a simple application of what the French call

the _masse centrale_. The only way to secure both places from attack was to

divide the fleet, just as in 1801 Nelson in the same theatre was compelled

to divide his defence force. In neither case was division a fault, because

it was a necessity. The fault in Monk's and Rupert's case was that they

extended their reach with no proper provision to preserve cohesion. Close

cruiser connection should have been maintained between the two divisions,

and Monk should not have engaged deeply till he felt Rupert at his elbow.

This we are told was the opinion of most of his flag-officers. They held

that he should not have fought when he did. His correct course, on

Kempenfelt's principle, would have been to hang on De Ruyter so as to

prevent his doing anything, and to have slowly fallen back, drawing the

Dutch after him till his loosened concentration was closed up again. If De

Ruyter had refused to follow him through the Straits, there would have been

plenty of time to mass the fleet. If De Ruyter had followed, he could have

been fought in a position from which there would have been no escape. The

fault, in fact, was not strategical, but rather one of tactical judgment.

Monk over-estimated the advantage of his surprise and the relative fighting

values of the two fleets, and believed he saw his way to victory

single-handed. The danger of division is being surprised and forced to

fight in inferiority. This was not Monk's case. He was not surprised, and

he could easily have avoided action had he so desired. To judge such a case

simply by using concentration as a touchstone can only tend to set up such

questionable habits of thought as have condemned the more famous division

which occurred in the crisis of the campaign of 1805, and with which we

must deal later.

Apart from the general danger of using either words or maxims in this way,

it is obviously specially unwise in the case of concentration and division.

The current rule is that it is bad to divide unless you have a great

superiority; yet there have been numerous occasions when, being at war with

an inferior enemy, we have found our chief embarrassment in the fact that

he kept his fleet divided, and was able thereby to set up something like a

deadlock. The main object of our naval operations would then be to break it

down. To force an inferior enemy to concentrate is indeed the almost

necessary preliminary to securing one of those crushing victories at which

we must always aim, but which so seldom are obtained. It is by forcing the

enemy to attempt to concentrate that we get our opportunity by sagacious

dispersal of crushing his divisions in detail. It is by inducing him to

mass that we simplify our problem and compel him to choose between leaving

to us the exercise of command and putting it to the decision of a great

action.

Advocates of close concentration will reply that that is true enough. We do

often seek to force our enemy to concentrate, but that does not show that

concentration is sometimes a disadvantage, for we ourselves must

concentrate closely to force a similar concentration on the enemy. The

maxim, indeed, has become current that concentration begets concentration,

but it is not too much to say that it is a maxim which history flatly

contradicts. If the enemy is willing to hazard all on a battle, it is true.

But if we are too superior, or our concentration too well arranged for him

to hope for victory, then our concentration has almost always had the

effect of forcing him to disperse for sporadic action. So certain was this

result, that in our old wars, in which we were usually superior, we always

adopted the loosest possible concentrations in order to prevent sporadic

action. True, the tendency of the French to adopt this mode of warfare is

usually set down to some constitutional ineptitude that is outside

strategical theory, but this view is due rather to the irritation which the

method caused us, than to sober reasoning. For a comparatively weak

belligerent sporadic action was better than nothing, and the only other

alternative was for him to play into our hands by hazarding the decision

which it was our paramount interest to obtain. Sporadic action alone could

never give our enemy command of the sea, but it could do us injury and

embarrass our plans, and there was always hope it might so much loosen our

concentration as to give him a fair chance of obtaining a series of

successful minor decisions.

Take, now, the leading case of 1805. In that campaign our distribution was

very wide, and was based on several concentrations. The first had its

centre in the Downs, and extended not only athwart the invading army's line

of passage, but also over the whole North Sea, so as to prevent

interference with our trade or our system of coast defence either from the

Dutch in the Texel or from French squadrons arriving north-about. The

second, which was known as the Western Squadron, had its centre off Ushant,

and was spread over the whole Bay of Biscay by means of advanced squadrons

before Ferrol and Rochefort. With a further squadron off the coast of

Ireland, it was able also to reach far out into the Atlantic in order to

receive our trade. It kept guard, in fact, not only over the French naval

ports, but over the approaches to the Channel, where were the home

terminals of the great southern and western trade-routes. A third

concentration was in the Mediterranean, whose centre under Nelson was at

Sardinia. It had outlying sub-centres at Malta and Gibraltar, and covered

the whole ground from Cape St. Vincent outside the Straits to Toulon,

Trieste, and the Dardanelles. When war broke out with Spain in 1804, it was

considered advisable to divide this command, and Spanish waters outside the

Straits were held by a fourth concentration, whose centre was off Cadiz,

and whose northern limit was Cape Finisterre, where it joined the Ushant

concentration. For reasons which were personal rather than strategical this

arrangement was not continued long, nor indeed after a few months was there

the same need for it, for the Toulon squadron had changed its base to

Cadiz. By this comprehensive system the whole of the European seas were

controlled both for military and trade purposes. In the distant terminal

areas, like the East and West Indies, there were nucleus concentrations

with the necessary connective machinery permanently established, and to

render them effective, provision was made by which the various European

squadrons could throw off detachments to bring up their force to any

strength which the movements of the enemy might render necessary.

Wide as was this distribution, and great as its reach, a high degree of

cohesion was maintained not only between the parts of each concentration,

but between the several concentrations themselves. By means of a minor

cruiser centre at the Channel Islands, the Downs and Ushant concentrations

could rapidly cohere. Similarly the Cadiz concentration was linked up with

that of Ushant at Finisterre, and but for personal friction and repulsion,

the cohesion between the Mediterranean and Cadiz concentrations would have

been equally strong. Finally, there was a masterly provision made for all

the concentrations to condense into one great mass at the crucial point off

Ushant before by any calculable chance a hostile mass could gather there.

For Napoleon's best admirals, "who knew the craft of the sea," the British

fleet thus disposed was in a state of concentration that nothing but a

stroke of luck beyond the limit of sober calculation could break. Decrès

and Bruix had no doubt of it, and the knowledge overpowered Villeneuve when

the crisis came. After he had carried the concentration which Napoleon had

planned so far as to have united three divisions in Ferrol, he knew that

the outlying sections of our Western Squadron had disappeared from before

Ferrol and Rochefort. In his eyes, as well as those of the British

Admiralty, this squadron, in spite of its dispersal in the Bay of Biscay,

had always been in a state of concentration. It was not this which caused

his heart to fail. It was the news that Nelson had reappeared at Gibraltar,

and had been seen steering northward. It meant for him that the whole of

his enemy's European fleet was in a state of concentration. "Their

concentration of force," he afterwards wrote, "was at the moment more

serious than in any previous disposition, and such that they were in a

position to meet in superiority the combined forces of Brest and Ferrol,"

and for that reason, he explained, he had given up the game as lost. But to

Napoleon's unpractised eye it was impossible to see what it was he had to

deal with. Measuring the elasticity of the British naval distribution by

the comparatively cumbrous and restricted mobility of armies, he saw it as

a rash and unwarlike dispersal. Its looseness seemed to indicate so great a

tenderness for the distant objectives that lay open to his scattered

squadrons, that he believed by a show of sporadic action he could further

disperse our fleet, and then by a close concentration crush the essential

part in detail. It was a clear case of the enemy's dispersal forcing us to

adopt the loosest concentration, and of our comparative dispersal tempting

the enemy to concentrate and hazard a decision. It cannot be said we forced

the fatal move upon him intentionally. It was rather the operation of

strategical law set in motion by our bold distribution. We were determined

that his threat of invasion, formidable as it was, should not force upon us

so close a concentration as to leave our widespread interests open to his

attack. Neither can it be said that our first aim was to prevent his

attempting to concentrate. Every one of his naval ports was watched by a

squadron, but it was recognised that this would not prevent concentration.

The escape of one division might well break the chain. But that

consideration made no difference. The distribution of our squadrons before

his naval ports was essential for preventing sporadic action. Their

distribution was dictated sufficiently by the defence of commerce and of

colonial and allied territory, by our need, that is, to exercise a general

command even if we could not destroy the enemy's force.

The whole of Nelson's correspondence for this period shows that his main

object was the protection of our Mediterranean trade and of Neapolitan and

Turkish territory. When Villeneuve escaped him, his irritation was caused

not by the prospect of a French concentration, which had no anxieties for

him, for he knew counter-concentrations were provided for. It was caused

rather by his having lost the opportunity which the attempt to concentrate

had placed within his reach. He followed Villeneuve to the West Indies, not

to prevent concentration, but, firstly, to protect the local trade and

Jamaica, and secondly, in hope of another chance of dealing the blow he had

missed. Lord Barham took precisely the same view. When on news of

Villeneuve's return from the West Indies he moved out the three divisions

of the Western Squadron, that is, the Ushant concentration, to meet him, he

expressly stated, not that his object was to prevent concentration, but

that it was to deter the French from attempting sporadic action. "The

interception of the fleet in question," he wrote, "on its return to Europe

would be a greater object than any I know. It would damp all future

expeditions, and would show to Europe that it might be advisable to relax

in the blockading system occasionally for the express purpose of putting

them in our hands at a convenient opportunity."

Indeed we had no reason for preventing the enemy's concentration. It was

our best chance of solving effectually the situation we have to confront.

Our true policy was to secure permanent command by a great naval decision.

So long as the enemy remained divided, no such decision could be expected.

It was not, in fact, till he attempted his concentration, and its last

stage had been reached, that the situation was in our hands. The intricate

problem with which we had been struggling was simplified down to closing up

our own concentration to the strategical centre off Ushant. But at the last

stage the enemy could not face the formidable position we held. His

concentration was stopped. Villeneuve fell back on Cadiz, and the problem

began to assume for us something of its former intricacy. So long as we

held the mass off Ushant which our great concentration had produced, we

were safe from invasion. But that was not enough. It left the seas open to

sporadic action from Spanish ports. There were convoys from the East and

West Indies at hand, and there was our expedition in the Mediterranean in

jeopardy, and another on the point of sailing from Cork. Neither Barham at

the Admiralty nor Cornwallis in command off Ushant hesitated an hour. By a

simultaneous induction they both decided the mass must be divided. The

concentration must be opened out again, and it was done. Napoleon called

the move an _insigne betise_, but it was the move that beat him, and must

have beaten him, whatever the skill of his admirals, for the two squadrons

never lost touch. He found himself caught in a situation from which there

was nothing to hope. His fleet was neither concentrated for a decisive blow

nor spread for sporadic action. He had merely simplified his enemy's

problem. Our hold was surer than ever, and in a desperate attempt to

extricate himself he was forced to expose his fleet to the final decision

we required.

The whole campaign serves well to show what was understood by concentration

at the end of the great naval wars. To Lord Barham and the able admirals

who interpreted his plans it meant the possibility of massing at the right

time and place. It meant, in close analogy to strategic deployment on land,

the disposal of squadrons about a strategical centre from which fleets

could condense for massed action in any required direction, and upon which

they could fall back when unduly pressed. In this case the ultimate centre

was the narrows of the Channel, where Napoleon's army lay ready to cross,

but there was no massing there. So crude a distribution would have meant a

purely defensive attitude. It would have meant waiting to be struck instead

of seeking to strike, and such an attitude was arch-heresy to our old

masters of war.

So far we have only considered concentration as applied to wars in which we

have a preponderance of naval force, but the principles are at least

equally valid when a coalition places us in inferiority. The leading case

is the home campaign of 1782. It was strictly on defensive lines. Our

information was that France and Spain intended to end the war with a great

combined effort against our West Indian islands, and particularly Jamaica.

It was recognised that the way to meet the threat was to concentrate for

offensive action in the Caribbean Sea everything that was not absolutely

needed for home defence. Instead, therefore, of trying to be strong enough

to attempt the offensive in both areas, it was decided to make sure of the

area that was most critical. To do this the home fleet had to be reduced so

low relatively to what the enemy had in European waters that offence was

out of the question.

While Rodney took the offensive area, Lord Howe was given the other. His

task was to prevent the coalition obtaining such a command of home waters

as would place our trade and coasts at their mercy, and it was not likely

to prove a light one. We knew that the enemy's plan was to combine their

attack on the West Indies with an attempt to control the North Sea, and

possibly the Straits of Dover, with a Dutch squadron of twelve to fifteen

of the line, while a combined Franco-Spanish fleet of at least forty sail

would occupy the mouth of the Channel. It was also possible that these two

forces would endeavour to form a junction. In any case the object of the

joint operations would be to paralyse our trade and annoy our coasts, and

thereby force us to neglect the West Indian area and the two Spanish

objectives, Minorca and Gibraltar. All told we had only about thirty of the

line on the home station, and though a large proportion of these were

three-deckers, a good many could not be ready for sea till the summer.

Inferior as was the available force, there was no thought of a purely

passive defence. It would not meet the case. Something must be done to

interfere with the offensive operations of the allies in the West Indies

and against Gibraltar, or they would attain the object of their home

campaign. It was resolved to effect this by minor counterstrokes on their

line of communications to the utmost limit of our defensive reach. It would

mean a considerable stretch of our concentration, but we were determined to

do what we could to prevent reinforcements from reaching the West Indies

from Brest, to intercept French trade as occasion offered, and, finally, at

almost any risk to relieve Gibraltar.

In these conditions the defensive concentration was based on a central mass

or reserve at Spithead, a squadron in the Downs to watch the Texel for the

safety of the North Sea trade, and another to the westward to watch Brest

and interrupt its transatlantic communications. Kempenfelt in command of

the latter squadron had just shown what could be done by his great exploit

of capturing Guichen's convoy of military and naval stores for the West

Indies. Early in the spring he was relieved by Barrington, who sailed on

April 5th to resume the Ushant position. His instructions were not to fight

a superior enemy unless in favourable circumstances, but to retire on

Spithead. He was away three weeks, and returned with a French East India

convoy with troops and stores, and two of the ships of-the-line which

formed its escort.

Up to this time there had been no immediate sign of the great movement from

the south. The Franco-Spanish fleet which had assembled at Cadiz was

occupied ineffectually in trying to stop small reliefs reaching Gibraltar

and in covering their own homeward-bound trade. The Dutch, however, were

becoming active, and the season was approaching for our Baltic trade to

come home. Ross in the North Sea had but four of the line to watch the

Texel, and was in no position to deal with the danger. Accordingly early in

May the weight of the home concentration was thrown into the North Sea. On

the 10th Howe sailed with Barrington and the bulk of the fleet to join Ross

in the Downs, while Kempenfelt again took the Ushant position. Only about

half the Brest Squadron had gone down to join the Spaniards at Cadiz, and

he was told his first duty was to intercept the rest if it put to sea, but,

as in Barrington's instructions, if he met a superior squadron he was to

retire up Channel under the English coast and join hands with Howe. In

spite of the fact that influenza was now raging in the fleet, he succeeded

in holding the French inactive. Howe with the same difficulty to face was

equally successful. The Dutch had put to sea, but returned immediately they

knew of his movement, and cruising off the Texel, he held them there, and

kept complete command of the North Sea till our Baltic trade was safe home.

By the end of May it was done, and as our intelligence indicated that the

great movement from Cadiz was at last about to begin, Howe, to whom a

certain discretion had been left, decided it was time to shift the weight

to his other wing and close on Kempenfelt. The Government, however, seemed

to think that he ought to be able to use his position for offensive

operations against Dutch trade, but in the admiral's opinion this was to

lose hold of the design and sacrifice cohesion too much to reach. He

informed them that he had not deemed it advisable to make detachments from

his squadron against the trade, "not knowing how suddenly there might be a

call, for the greater part of it at least, to the westward." In accordance,

therefore, with his general instructions he left with Ross a strong

squadron of nine of the line, sufficient to hold in check, and even "to

take and destroy," the comparatively weak ships of the Dutch, and with the

rest returned to the westward.[13] His intention was to proceed with all

possible expedition to join Kempenfelt on the coast of France, but this,

owing to the ravages of the influenza, he was unable to do. Kempenfelt was

forced to come in, and on June 5th the junction was made at Spithead.

[13] The Dutch were believed to have sixteen of the line--one

seventy-four, seven sixty-eights, and the rest under sixty guns. In

Ross's squadron were one three-decker and two eighties.

For three weeks, so severe was the epidemic, they could not move. Then came

news that the Cadiz fleet under Langara had sailed the day Howe had reached

Spithead, and he resolved to make a dash with every ship fit to put to sea

to cut it off from Brest. He was too late. Before he could get into

position the junction between Langara and the Brest squadron was made, and

in their full force the allies had occupied the mouth of the Channel. With

the addition of the Brest ships the combined fleet numbered forty of the

line, while all Howe could muster was twenty-two, but amongst them were

seven three-deckers and three eighties, and he would soon be reinforced.

Three of Ross's smallest ships were recalled, and five others were nearly

ready, but for these Howe could not wait. The homeward-bound Jamaica convoy

was at hand, and at all hazards it must be saved.

What was to be done? So soon as he sighted the enemy he realised that a

successful action was out of the question. Early in the morning of July

12th, "being fifteen leagues S.S.E. from Scilly," Langara with thirty-six

of the line was seen to the westward. "As soon," wrote Howe, "as their

force had been ascertained, I thought proper to avoid coming to battle with

them as then circumstanced, and therefore steered to the north to pass

between Scilly and the Land's End. My purpose therein was to get to the

westward of the enemy, both for protecting the Jamaica convoy and to gain

the advantage of situation for bringing them to action which the difference

in our numbers renders desirable."

By a most brilliant effort of seamanship the dangerous movement was

effected safely that night, and it proved an entire success. Till Howe was

met with and defeated, the allies would not venture into the Channel, and

his unprecedented feat had effectually thrown them off. Assuming apparently

that he must have passed round their rear to seaward, they sought him to

the southward, and there for a month beat up and down in ineffective

search. Meanwhile Howe, sending his cruisers ahead to the convoy's

rendezvous off the south-west coast of Iceland, had taken his whole fleet

about two hundred miles west of the Skelligs to meet it. Northerly winds

prevented his reaching the right latitude in time, but it mattered little.

The convoy passed in between him and the south of Ireland, and as the enemy

had taken a cast down to Ushant, it was able to enter the Channel in safety

without sighting an enemy's sail. Ignorant of what had happened, Howe

cruised for a week practising the ships "in connected movements so

particularly necessary on the present occasion." Then with his fleet in

fine condition to carry out preventive tactics in accordance with

Kempenfelt's well-known exposition,[14] he returned to seek the enemy to

the eastward, in order to try to draw them from their station at Scilly and

open the Channel. On his way he learnt the convoy had passed in, and with

this anxiety off his mind he bore up for the Lizard, where his

reinforcements were awaiting him. There he found the Channel was free. From

lack of supplies the enemy had been forced to retire to port, and he

returned to Spithead to make preparations for the relief of Gibraltar.

While this work was going on, the North Sea squadron was again strengthened

that it might resume the blockade of the Texel and cover the arrival of the

autumn convoys from the Baltic. It was done with complete success. Not a

single ship fell into the enemy's hands, and the campaign, and indeed the

war, ended by Howe taking the mass of his force down to Gibraltar and

performing his remarkable feat of relieving it in the face of the Spanish

squadron. For the power and reach of a well-designed concentration there

can be no finer example.

[14] See post, pp. 222-24.

If, now, we seek from the above and similar examples for principles to

serve as a guide between concentration and division we shall find, firstly,

this one. The degree of division we shall require is in proportion to the

number of naval ports from which the enemy can act against our maritime

interests and to the extent of coastline along which they are spread. It is

a principle which springs from the soul of our old tradition that we must

always seek, not merely to prevent the enemy striking at our heart, but

also to strike him the moment he attempts to do anything. We must make of

his every attempt an opportunity for a counterstroke. The distribution this

aim entailed varied greatly with different enemies. In our wars with

France, and particularly when Spain and Holland were in alliance with her,

the number of the ports to be dealt with was very considerable and their

distribution very wide. In our wars with the Dutch alone, on the other

hand, the number and distribution were comparatively small, and in this

case our concentration was always close.

This measure of distribution, however, will never stand alone.

Concentration will not depend solely upon the number and position of the

enemy's naval ports. It will be modified by the extent to which the lines

of operation starting from those ports traverse our own home waters. The

reason is plain. Whatever the enemy opposed to us, and whatever the nature

of the war, we must always keep a fleet at home. In any circumstances it is

essential for the defence of our home trade terminals, and it is essential

as a central reserve from which divisions can be thrown off to reinforce

distant terminals and to seize opportunities for counterstrokes. It is "the

mainspring," as Lord Barham put it, "from which all offensive operations

must proceed." This squadron, then, being permanent and fixed as the

foundation of our whole system, it is clear that if, as in the case of the

French wars, the enemy's lines of operation do not traverse our home

waters, close concentration upon it will not serve our turn. If, on the

other hand, as in the case of the Dutch wars, the lines do traverse home

waters, a home concentration is all that is required. Our division will

then be measured by the amount of our surplus strength, and by the extent

to which we feel able to detach squadrons for offensive action against the

enemy's distant maritime interests without prejudicing our hold on the home

terminals of his lines of operation and our power of striking directly he

moves. These remarks apply, of course, to the main fleet operations. If

such an enemy has distant colonial bases from which he can annoy our trade,

minor concentrations must naturally be arranged in those areas.

Next we have to note that where the enemy's squadrons are widely

distributed in numerous bases, we cannot always simplify the problem by

leaving some of them open so as to entice him to concentrate and reduce the

number of ports to be watched. For if we do this, we leave the unwatched

squadrons free for sporadic action. Unless we are sure he intends to

concentrate with a view to a decisive action, our only means of simplifying

the situation is to watch every port closely enough to interfere

effectually with sporadic action. Then, sporadic action being denied him,

the enemy must either do nothing or concentrate.

The next principle is flexibility. Concentration should be so arranged that

any two parts may freely cohere, and that all parts may quickly condense

into a mass at any point in the area of concentration. The object of

holding back from forming the mass is to deny the enemy knowledge of our

actual distribution or its intention at any given moment, and at the same

time to ensure that it will be adjusted to meet any dangerous movement that

is open to him. Further than this our aim should be not merely to prevent

any part being overpowered by a superior force, but to regard every

detached squadron as a trap to lure the enemy to destruction. The ideal

concentration, in short, is an appearance of weakness that covers a reality

of strength.

* * * * *

PART THREE

CONDUCT OF NAVAL WAR

* * * * *

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTORY

* * * * *

I. INHERENT DIFFERENCES IN THE

CONDITIONS OF WAR ON LAND AND ON SEA

Before attempting to apply the foregoing general principles in a definite

manner to the conduct of naval war, it is necessary to clear the ground of

certain obstacles to right judgment. The gradual elucidation of the theory

of war, it must be remembered, has been almost entirely the work of

soldiers, but so admirable is the work they have done, and so philosophical

the method they have adopted, that a very natural tendency has arisen to

assume that their broad-based conclusions are of universal application.

That the leading lines which they have charted are in a certain sense those

which must govern all strategy no one will deny. They are the real

pioneers, and their methods must be in the main our methods, but what we

have to remember is that the country we have to travel is radically

different from that in which they acquired their skill.

A moment's consideration will reveal how far-reaching the differences are.

Let us ask ourselves what are the main ideas around which all the military

lore turns. It may be taken broadly that the general principles are three

in number. Firstly, there is the idea of concentration of force, that is,

the idea of overthrowing the enemy's main strength by bringing to bear upon

it the utmost accumulation of weight and energy within your means;

secondly, there is the idea that strategy is mainly a question of definite

lines of communication; and thirdly, there is the idea of concentration of

effort, which means keeping a single eye on the force you wish to overthrow

without regard to ulterior objects. Now if we examine the conditions which

give these principles so firm a footing on land, we shall find that in all

three cases they differ at sea, and differ materially.

Take the first, which, in spite of all the deductions we have to make from

it in the case of limited wars, is the dominating one. The pithy maxim

which expresses its essence is that our primary objective is the enemy's

main force. In current naval literature the maxim is applied to the sea in

some such form as this: "The primary object of our battle-fleet is to seek

out and destroy that of the enemy." On the surface nothing could look

sounder, but what are the conditions which underlie the one and the other?

The practical value of the military maxim is based upon the fact that in

land warfare it is always theoretically possible to strike at your enemy's

army, that is, if you have the strength and spirit to overcome the

obstacles and face the risks. But at sea this is not so. In naval warfare

we have a far-reaching fact which is entirely unknown on land. It is simply

this--that it is possible for your enemy to remove his fleet from the board

altogether. He may withdraw it into a defended port, where it is absolutely

out of your reach without the assistance of an army. No amount of naval

force, and no amount of offensive spirit, can avail you. The result is that

in naval warfare an embarrassing dilemma tends to assert itself. If you are

in a superiority that justifies a vigorous offensive and prompts you to

seek out your enemy with a view to a decision, the chances are you will

find him in a position where you cannot touch him. Your offence is

arrested, and you find yourself in what, at least theoretically, is the

weakest general position known to war.

This was one of our earliest discoveries in strategy. It followed indeed

immediately and inevitably upon our discovery that the most drastic way of

making war was to concentrate every effort on the enemy's armed forces. In

dealing with the theory of war in general a caveat has already been entered

against the too common assumption that this method was an invention of

Napoleon's or Frederick's, or that it was a foreign importation at all. In

the view at least of our own military historians the idea was born in our

Civil Wars with Cromwell and the New Model Army. It was the conspicuous

feature that distinguished our Civil War from all previous wars of modern

times. So astonishing was its success--as foreign observers remarked--that

it was naturally applied by our soldier-admirals at sea so soon as war

broke out with the Dutch. Whatever may be the claims of the Cromwellian

soldiers to have invented for land warfare what is regarded abroad as the

chief characteristic of the Napoleonic method, it is beyond doubt that they

deserve the credit of it at sea. All three Dutch wars had a commercial

object, and yet after the first campaign the general idea never was to make

the enemy's commerce a primary objective. That place was occupied

throughout by their battle-fleets, and under Monk and Rupert at least those

objectives were pursued with a singleness of purpose and a persistent

vehemence that was entirely Napoleonic.