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In my chapter on "Invasion" no mention is made of those subsidiary forms of military enterprise across the sea which are known as raids. I have treated invasion as an enterprise having for its object the subjugation of the country invaded, or at least the subjection of its people and their rulers to the enemy's will. As such it requires a force commensurate in numbers with the object to be attained, and it stands to reason that this force must needs be so large that its chances of evading the vigilance of an enemy who is in effective command of the sea must always be infinitesimal. A raid, on the other hand, is an enterprise of much lesser magnitude and much smaller moment. Its method is to elude the enemy's naval guard at this or that point of his territory; and, having done so, its purpose is to land troops at some vulnerable point of the territory assailed, there to create alarm and confusion and to do as much harm as they can--which may be considerable before their sea communications are severed by the defending naval force assumed to be still in effective command of the sea affected. If that command is maintained, the troops engaged in the raid must inevitably be reduced sooner or later to the condition of a forlorn hope which has failed. If, on the other hand, that command is overthrown, then the troops aforesaid may prove to be the advanced guard of an invasion to follow. Thus, although a successful raid may sometimes be carried out in the teeth of an adverse command of the sea, yet it cannot be converted into an invasion until that adverse command has been assailed and overthrown. It is thus essentially fugitive in character, possibly very effective as a diversion, certain to be mortifying to the belligerent assailed, and not at all unlikely to cause him much injury and even more alarm, but quite incapable of deciding the larger issues of the conflict so long as his command of the sea remains unchallenged. It is perhaps expedient to say this much on the subject, because the programme of the Naval Manoeuvres of this year is known to have included a series of raids of this fugitive character. Whether, or to what extent, any of these operations were adjudged to have been successful I do not know. I am only concerned to point out that, whether successful or not, their utmost success can throw little or no light on the problem of invasion unless in the course of the same operations the defenders' command of the sea was adjudged to have been overthrown.

In my chapter on "The Differentiation of Naval Force" I endeavoured to define the functions of the so-called "battle-cruiser" and to forecast its special uses in war. At the same time I pointed out that "it is held by some high authorities that the battle-cruiser is in very truth a hybrid and an anomaly, and that no adequate reason for its existence can be given." It would appear that the views of these high authorities have now been adopted, in some measure at least, by the Admiralty. Since the chapter in question was in type it has been officially announced that the battle-cruiser has been placed in temporary, and perhaps permanent, abeyance. Its place is to be taken by a special type of fast battleship, vessels in every way fit to lie in a line and yet, at the same time, endowed with qualities which, without unduly increasing their size and displacement, will enable them to discharge the special functions which I assigned to the battle-cruiser in the line of battle. This is done by employing oil instead of coal as the source of the ship's motive power. The change thus adumbrated would seem to be in the natural order of evolution, and at the same time to be in large measure one rather of nomenclature than of substance. The battle-cruiser, as its name implies, is itself essentially a fast battleship in one aspect and an exceedingly powerful cruiser in another. In the fast battleship which is to replace it, the battle function will be still further developed at the expense of the cruiser function. But its speed will still qualify it to be employed as a cruiser whenever occasion serves or necessity requires, just as the battle-cruiser was qualified to lie in a line and do its special work in a fleet action. The main difference is that the fast battleship is much less likely to be employed as a cruiser than the battle-cruiser was; but I pointed out in the text that the employment even of the battle-cruiser in cruiser functions proper was likely to be only occasional and subsidiary.

The decision to use oil as the exclusive source of the motive power of fast battleships, and of certain types of small cruisers of exceptional speed, is undoubtedly a very significant one. It may be taken to point to a time when oil only will be employed in the propulsion of warships and coal will be discarded altogether. But that consummation can only be reached when the internal combustion engine has been much more highly developed for purposes of marine propulsion than it is at present. At present oil is only employed in large warships for the purpose of producing steam by the external combustion of the oil. But it may be anticipated that a process of evolution, now in its initial stages in the Diesel and other internal combustion engines, will in course of time result in the production of an internal combustion engine capable of propelling the largest ships at any speed that is now attainable by existing methods. When that stage is reached oil will, for economic reasons alone, undoubtedly hold the field for all purposes of propulsion in warships. It is held by some that this country will then be placed at a great disadvantage, inasmuch as it possesses a monopoly of the best steam coal, whereas it has no monopoly of oil at all, and probably no sufficient domestic supply of it to meet the needs of the Fleet in time of war. But oil can be stored as easily as coal and, unlike coal, it does not deteriorate in storage. To bring it in sufficient supplies from abroad in time of war should be no more difficult for a Power which commands the sea than to bring in the supplies of food and raw material on which this country depends at all times for its very existence. Moreover, even if we continued to depend on coal alone, that coal, together with other supplies in large quantities, must, as I have shown in my last chapter, be carried across the seas in a continuous stream to our fleets in distant waters, and one of the great advantages of oil over coal is that it can be transferred with the greatest ease to the warships requiring it at any rendezvous on the high seas, whether in home waters or at the uttermost ends of the globe, which may be most conveniently situated for the conduct of the operations in hand. For these reasons I hold that no serious apprehension need be entertained lest the supply of oil to our warships should fail so long as we hold the command of the sea. If ever we lost the command of the sea we should not be worrying about the supply of oil. Oil or no oil, we should be starving, destitute and defenceless.

It only remains for me to express my gratitude to my friend Sir Charles Ottley, not merely for an Introduction in which I cannot but fear that he has allowed his friendship to get the better of his judgment, but also for his kindness in devoting so much of his scanty leisure to the reading of my proofs and the making of many valuable suggestions thereon. I have also to thank my friend Captain Herbert W. Richmond, R.N., for his unselfish kindness in allowing me to make use of his notes on the Dunkirk campaign which he has closely studied in the original papers preserved at the Admiralty and the Record Office. To my son, Lieutenant H.G. Thursfield, R.N., I am also indebted for many valuable suggestions. Finally, my acknowledgments are due to the Editors of this series and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for their uniform courtesy and consideration.

J.R.T.

NAVAL WARFARE

INTRODUCTORY

War is the armed conflict of national wills, an appeal to force as between nation and nation. Naval warfare is that part of the conflict which takes place on the seas. The civilized world is divided into separate, independent States or nations, each sovereign within its own borders. Each State pursues its own ideas and aims and embodies them in a national policy; and so far as this policy affects only its own citizens, it is subject to no control except that of the national conscience and the national sense of the public welfare. Within the State itself civil war may arise when internal dissensions divide the nation into two parties, of which either pursues a policy to which the other refuses to submit. In this case, unless the two parties agree to separate without conflict, as was done by Sweden and Norway a few years ago, an armed conflict ensues and the nation is divided into two belligerent States which may or may not become, according to the fortune of war, separate, independent, and sovereign in the end. The great example of this in our own time was the War of Secession in America, which, happily for both parties, ended without disruption, in the surrender of the weaker of the two, and after a time in a complete reconciliation between them.

Between two separate, sovereign, independent nations a state of war arises in this wise. We have seen that the internal policy of an independent State is subject to no direct external control. But States do not exist in isolation. Their citizens trade with the citizens of other States, seeking to exchange the products of their respective industries to the advantage of both. As they grow in prosperity, wealth, and population, their capital seeks employment in other lands, and their surplus population seeks an outlet in such regions of the earth as are open to their occupation. Thus arise external relations between one State and another, and the interests affected by these relations are often found--and perhaps still more often believed--by one State to be at variance with those of another. In pursuit of these interests--which, as they grow and expand, become embodied in great consolidated kingdoms, great colonial empires, or great imperial dependencies, and tend to be regarded in time as paramount to all other national interests--each State formulates and pursues an external policy of its own which may or may not be capable of amicable adjustment to the policy of other States engaged in similar enterprises. It is the function of diplomacy to effect adjustments such as these where it can. It succeeds much more often than it fails. Conflicting policies are deflected by mutual agreement and concession so as to avoid the risk of collision, and each State, without abandoning its policy, modifies it and adjusts it to the exigencies of the occasion. Sometimes, however, diplomacy fails, either because the conflicting policies are really irreconcilable, or because passion, prejudice, national ambition, or international misunderstanding induces the citizens of both States and their rulers so to regard them. In that case, if neither State is prepared so to deflect its policy as to avert collision, war ensues. The policy remains unchanged, but the means of further pursuing it, otherwise than by an appeal to force, are exhausted. War is thus, according to the famous definition of Clausewitz, the pursuit of national policy by other means than those which mere diplomacy has at its command--in other words by the conflict of armed force. Each State now seeks to bend its enemy's will to its own and to impose its policy upon him.

The means of pursuing this policy vary almost indefinitely. But inasmuch as war is essentially the conflict of armed force, the primary object of each belligerent must in all cases be to subdue, and, in the last resort, to destroy the armed forces of the adversary. When that is done all is done that war can do. How to do this most speedily and most effectively is the fundamental problem of war. There is no cut-and-dried solution of the problem, because although war may be considered, as it has been considered above, in the abstract, it is the most concrete of all human arts and, subject to the fundamental principle above enunciated, its particular forms may, and indeed must, vary with the circumstances and conditions of each particular war. Many commentators on war distinguishing, with Clausewitz, between "limited" and "unlimited" war, would further insist that the forms of war must vary with its objects. I cannot follow this distinction, which seems to me to be inconsistent with the fundamental proposition of Clausewitz, to the effect that war is the pursuit of policy by means of the conflict of armed force. If you desire your policy to prevail you must take the best means that are open to you to make it prevail. It is worse than useless to dissipate your energies in the pursuit of any purpose, however important in itself, which does not directly conduce, and conduce better than any other purpose you could pursue, to that paramount end. The only limitation of your efforts that you can tolerate is that they should involve the least expenditure of energy that may be necessary to make your policy prevail. But that is a question of the economics of war; it is not a question of "limited war" or of "war for a limited object." Your sole object is to bend the enemy to your will. That object is essentially an unlimited one, or one that is limited only by the extent of the efforts which the enemy makes to withstand you. The only sure way of attaining this object is to destroy his armed forces. If he submits before this is done it is he that limits the war, not you. Bacon's unimpeachable maxim in this regard is often misinterpreted. "This much is certain," he says, "he that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much or as little of the war as he will." That is indisputable, but its postulate is that the belligerent has secured the command of the sea; that is, as I shall show hereafter, that he has subdued, if not destroyed, the armed forces of the enemy afloat. Having done that he may, in a certain sense, take as much or as little of the war as he chooses; but he must always take as much as will compel the enemy to come to terms.

Naval warfare is no essential part of the armed conflict between contending States. In some cases it exercises a decisive influence on the conduct and issue of the conflict, in others none at all or next to none. But sea power, that is, the advantage which a nation at war derives from its superiority at sea, may largely affect the issue of a war, even though no naval engagements of any moment may take place. In the Crimean War the unchallenged supremacy of England and France on the seas alone made it possible for the Allies to invade the Crimea and undertake the siege of Sebastopol; while the naval campaigns of the Allies in the Baltic, although they resulted in no decisive naval operation, yet largely contributed to the success of the Allied arms in the Crimea by compelling Russia to keep in the north large bodies of troops which might otherwise have turned the scale against the Allies in the South. In the War of 1859, between France and Austria, with the Sardinian kingdom allied to the former, the superiority of the Allies at sea enabled considerable portions of the French army to be transported from French to Piedmontese ports, and by threatening the flank of the Austrian line of advance, it accelerated the concentration of the Allies on the Ticino. It also enabled the Allies to maintain a close blockade of the Austrian ports in the Adriatic, and might have led to an attack from the sea on the Austrian rear in Venetia had not the military reverses of Austria in Lombardy brought the war to an end. In the War of Secession in America the issue was largely determined, or at least accelerated, by the close but not impenetrable blockade established by the North over the ports and coasts of the South, and by the co-operation of Farragut on the Mississippi with the Federal land forces in that region. On the other hand, in the War of 1866 there was no naval conflict worth mentioning between Austria and Prussia, because Prussia had no navy to speak of; but as Italy, a naval Power, was the ally of Prussia, and as Austria had a small but very efficient naval force led by a great naval commander, the conflict between these two Powers led to the Battle of Lissa, in which the Italian fleet was decisively defeated, though the triumph of Prussia over the armies of Austria saved Italy from the worst consequences of defeat, and indeed obtained for her, in spite of her military reverses on land, the coveted possession of Venetia. In the War of 1870 again, although the supremacy of France on the seas was never seriously challenged by Prussia, yet her collapse on land was so sudden and complete that her superiority at sea availed her little or nothing. The maritime trade of Prussia was annihilated for the time, but it was then too insignificant a factor in the economic fabric of Prussia for its destruction to count for much, and the fleets of France rode triumphant in the North Sea and the Baltic; but finding no ships to fight, having no troops to land, and giving a wide berth to fortifications with which they were ill-equipped--as ships always are and always must be--to contend without support from the military arm, their presence was little more than an idle and futile demonstration. In the Boer War the influence of England's unchallenged supremacy at sea, albeit latent, was decisive. The Boers had no naval force of any kind; but no nation not secure in its dominion of the seas could have undertaken such a war as England then had to wage, and it was perhaps only the paramount sea power of this country that prevented the conflict taking a form and assuming dimensions that would have taxed British endurance to the uttermost and must almost certainly have entailed the loss of South Africa to the Empire. Certain naval features of the Cuban War between Spain and the United States, and of the War in the Far East between Russia and Japan, will be more conveniently considered in subsequent chapters of this manual.

The normal correlation and interdependence of naval and military forces in the armed conflict of national wills is sufficiently illustrated by the foregoing examples. In certain abnormal and exceptional cases each can act and produce the desired effect without the other. In a few extreme cases it is hard to see how either could act at all. If, for instance, Spain and Switzerland were to fall out, how could either attack the other? They have no common frontier, and though Spain has a navy, Switzerland has no seaboard. Cases where naval conflict alone has decided the issue are those of the early wars between England and Holland. Neither could reach the other except across the sea, there was no territorial issue directly involved, and the object of both combatants was to secure a monopoly of maritime commerce. But as territorial issues, and territorial issues involving the sea and affected by it directly or indirectly, are nearly always at stake in great wars, history affords few examples of great international conflicts in which sea power does not enter as a factor, often of supreme importance.

It must of course enter as a factor of paramount importance in any war between an insular State and a continental one--as in the war between Russia and Japan--or between two continental States which--as in the war between Spain and the United States--have no common frontier on land. War being the armed conflict of national wills, it is manifest that the opposing wills cannot in cases such as these be brought into armed conflict unless one State or the other is in a position to operate on the sea. The first move in such a conflict must of necessity be made, by one belligerent or the other, on the sea. This involves the conception of "the command of the sea," and as this is the fundamental conception of naval warfare as such, our analysis of naval warfare must begin with an exposition of what is meant by the command of the sea.

THE COMMAND OF THE SEA

We have seen that when two States go to war the primary object of each is to subdue and if possible to destroy the armed forces of the other. Until that is done either completely, or to such an extent as to induce the defeated belligerent to submit, the conflict of wills cannot be determined, and the two States cannot return to those normal relations, involving no violence or force, which constitute a state of peace. If they have a common frontier this circumstance indicates what is, as a general rule, the best and most efficient way of securing the object to be attained. The armed forces of both belligerents lie at the outset within their respective frontiers. If those of either can be constrained by the superior strategy of the other to keep within their own territory, the initial advantage lies with the belligerent who has so constrained them, and the war has in common parlance been carried into the enemy's country. In other words, the invasion of the enemy's territory has begun, and pressure has been brought to bear on his will which, if maintained without intermission and with an intensity duly proportioned to its growing extent, must in the end subdue it. To this there is no alternative. To invade the enemy's territory at all is to inflict a reverse on his armed forces, which would assuredly have prevented the invasion if they could. The territory in the rear of the invading army is in greater or less degree brought under the control of the invader and thereby temporarily lost to the invaded State. If this process is continued the authority and the resources of the invaded State are progressively diminished, until at last when the capital is occupied and the remainder of the invaded country lies open to the advance of the invader, the defeated State must sue for peace on such terms as the invader may concede, because it has nothing left to fight for, and no force wherewithal to fight. This is of course merely an abstract and generalized description of the course of a war on land, but I need not consider its concrete details nor analyse any of the conditions which may, and in the concrete often do, impede or deflect its course, because my sole purpose is to show how armed force operates in the abstract to subdue the will of the belligerent who is worsted in the conflict. It operates by the destruction of his armed forces, by the occupation of his territory, and by the consequent extinction of his authority and appropriation of his resources. He can only recover the latter and liberate his territory by submitting to such terms as the invader may dictate or concede.

Naval warfare aims at the same primary object, namely, the destruction of the enemy's armed forces afloat; but it cannot by itself produce the same decisive effect, because there is no territory which naval force, as such, can occupy and appropriate. The sea is not territory. It is not nor can it be made subject to the authority of an enemy in the same sense that the land can, nor does it possess any resources in itself such as on the land can be appropriated to the disadvantage and ultimate discomfiture of a belligerent whose territory has been invaded. The sea is the common highway of all nations, and the exclusive possession of none. Apart from its fisheries, which, outside the territorial waters of any particular State, are open to all nations, it is of no use, except as a highway, to any State. But its use as a highway is the root of all sea power, the foundation of all naval warfare. It is only by this highway that an island State can be invaded, only by this highway that an island State, or a State having no common frontier with its adversary, can encounter and subdue the armed forces of the enemy, whether on sea or on land.

Moreover, the sea as a highway differs in many important respects from such highways or other lines of communication as serve for the transit and transport of armed forces and their necessary supplies on land. In one sense it is all highway, that is, it can be traversed in every direction by ships, wherever there is water enough for them to float. For military purposes land transit is confined to such highways as are suitable to the march of an army accompanied by artillery and heavy baggage and supply trains, or to such railways as can more expeditiously serve the same purpose. Hence an army advancing in an enemy's country cannot advance on a very broad front, nor can it outmarch its baggage and other supplies except for a very limited time and for some exceptional purpose. Sea transport is subject to no such limitations. Ships carry their own supplies with them, and a fleet of ships, whether of transports or of warships, can move on as broad a front as is compatible with the exercise of due control over their combined movements. Moreover, within certain limits and with certain exceptions, where the waters to be traversed are narrow, ships and fleets can vary their line of transit and advance to such an extent as to render the discovery of their whereabouts a matter of some difficulty. The same conditions affect the transit of such merchant vessels as, carrying the flag of one belligerent, are liable to capture by the other. Hence the primary aim of all naval warfare is and must be so to control the lines of communication which traverse the seas affected, that the enemy cannot move his warships from one point to another without encountering a superior force of his adversary, and that his merchant ships cannot prosecute their voyages without running extreme risk of capture by the way. This is called, in time-honoured phraseology, securing the command of the sea, and the true meaning of this phrase is nothing more nor less than the effective control of all such maritime communications as are or can be affected by the operations of either belligerent. This control may extend, according to circumstances, to all the navigable seas of the globe, or it may be confined, for all practical purposes, to the waters adjacent to the respective territories of the two belligerents. In theory, however, its effect is unlimited, and so it must be in practice, where the territories of one belligerent or the other are widely scattered over the globe. That is the sense in which "the sea is all one."

It is important to note that the phrase "command of the sea" has no definite meaning except in war. In time of peace no State claims to command the sea or to control it in any way. But in any war in which naval force is engaged each belligerent seeks to secure the command of the sea for himself and to deny it to his enemy, that is to close the highway which the sea affords in time of peace to his warships and his merchant vessels alike. As regards the enemy's warships, moreover, he seeks to secure his own command by their destruction or capture. This is not always possible, because if the naval forces of the two belligerents are very unequally matched, it is always open to the weaker of the two to decline the conflict by keeping his main fleets in ports unassailable by naval force alone, and seeking to reduce the superiority of his adversary by assailing him incessantly with torpedo craft. He may also attempt the hazardous enterprise of sending out isolated cruisers to prey upon his adversary's commerce afloat. But in the case supposed, where the superiority of one side is so great as to compel the main fleets of the other to seek the protection of their fortified ports, such an enterprise is, as I shall show in a subsequent chapter, not only extremely hazardous in itself, but quite incapable of inflicting such loss on the superior adversary as would be likely to induce him to abandon the conflict.

Nevertheless the command of the sea is not established, or at best it is only partially, and it may be only temporarily, established by driving the main fleets of the enemy into ports which are inaccessible to naval force alone. They must not only be driven there but compelled to remain there. This has generally been done in the past, and according to many, but not all, naval authorities, it will generally have to be done in the future by the operation known as blockade, whereby the enemy is prevented from coming out, or is compelled if he does come out to fight a superior force lying in wait outside. As a matter of fact, inasmuch as a blockade to be really deterrent must be conducted by a blockading force superior to that which is blockaded--for otherwise the latter need not shun an engagement in the open with the former--it can rarely be the interest of the blockader to prevent the exit of his adversary, since by the hypothesis if he could get him out he could beat him. But the blockade must nevertheless be maintained, because, although the blockaded fleet cannot by that means be destroyed, it can, at any rate, be immobilized and wiped off the board so long as it remains where it is.

The situation in which a blockade is set up by one belligerent and submitted to by the other is not identical with an effective command of the sea, though in certain circumstances it may approximate very closely to it. The blockaded forces may not be so thoroughly intimidated by the superior forces of the blockaders that they could not or would not, if they could, seek a favourable opportunity for breaking or evading the blockade imposed upon them. They may merely be waiting in a position unassailable by naval force alone until the blockading forces are so weakened through incessant torpedo attack, through the wear and tear inflicted on them by the nature of the service on which they are engaged, through stress of weather, through the periodical necessity which compels even the best found ships to withdraw temporarily from the blockade for the purposes of repair, refit, and replenishment of their stores, and through the fatigue imposed on their officers and crews by the incessant vigilance which a blockade requires as to afford them a favourable opportunity of challenging a decision in the open. Or, again, if the forces of the blockaded belligerent are distributed between two or more of his fortified ports, he may attempt an evasion of the blockade at two or more of them for the purpose of combining the forces thus liberated and attacking one or more of the blockading fleets in superior force before they can re-establish their own superiority by concentration. Broadly speaking, this was the plan of operations adopted, or rather attempted, by Napoleon in the memorable campaign which ended at Trafalgar. It was frustrated by the persistent energy of Nelson, by the masterly dispositions of Barham at the Admiralty, by the tenacity with which Cornwallis maintained the blockade at Brest, and by the instinctive sagacity with which other commanders of the several blockading and cruising squadrons nearly always did the right thing at the right moment, divined Barham's purpose, and carried it out almost automatically. Practically, Napoleon was beaten and his projected invasion of England was abandoned many weeks before Trafalgar was won. But the command of the sea was not thereby secured to England. It needed Trafalgar and the destruction of the French and Spanish Fleets there accomplished to effect that consummation. England thenceforth remained in effective and almost undisputed command of the sea, and the Peninsular campaigns of Wellington were for the first time rendered possible. The contrasted phases of the conflict before and after Trafalgar are perhaps the best illustration in history of the vast and vital difference between a command of the sea in dispute and a command of the sea established. Trafalgar was the turning-point in the long conflict between England and Napoleon.

DISPUTED COMMAND--BLOCKADE

I have so far treated blockade as the initial stage of a struggle for the command of the sea. That appears to me to be the logical order of treatment, because when two naval Powers go to war it is almost certain that the stronger of the two will at the outset attempt to blockade the naval forces of the other. The same thing is likely to happen even if the two are approximately equal in naval force, but in that case the blockade is not likely to be of long duration, because both sides will be eager to obtain a decision in the open. The command of the sea is a matter of such vital moment to both sides that each must needs seek to obtain it as soon and as completely as possible, and the only certain way to obtain it is by the destruction of the armed forces of the enemy. The advantage of putting to sea first is in naval warfare the equivalent or counterpart of the advantage in land warfare of first crossing the enemy's frontier. If that advantage is pushed home and the enemy is still unready it must lead to a blockade. It is, moreover, quite possible that even if both belligerents are equally ready--I am here assuming them to be approximately equal in force--one or other, if not both, may think it better strategy to await developments before risking everything in an attempt to secure an immediate decision. In point of fact, the difference between this policy and the policy of a declared blockade is, as I am about to show, almost imperceptible, especially in modern conditions of naval warfare. It is therefore necessary to consider the subject of blockade more in detail. Other subjects closely associated with this will also have to be considered in some detail before we can grasp the full purport and extent of what is meant by the command of the sea.

We have seen that the paramount purpose of all naval warfare, and, indeed, of all warfare, is the destruction of the armed forces of the enemy. His armed forces are in the last resort the sole instrument of his will, and their destruction to such an extent as is necessary to subdue his will is the sole agency by which peace can be restored. Whatever the extent of the war, whether it is limited or unlimited, in the sense assigned to those words by Clausewitz and his followers, the conflict of national wills out of which the quarrel arose must in some way be composed, either by concessions on both sides or by the complete subjection of one side to the other, before it can come to an end. It follows that the main object of a military blockade can rarely be to keep the enemy's forces sealed up, masked, and to that extent immobilized in the blockaded ports. Its real object is to secure that if they do come out they shall be observed, shadowed, and followed until such time as they can be encountered by a superior force, and if possible destroyed. The classical text on this topic is a letter written on August 1, 1804, by Nelson to the Lord Mayor of London, acknowledging a vote of thanks passed by the Corporation, and addressed to Nelson as commanding the fleet blockading Toulon. Nelson said in his reply: "I beg to inform your Lordship that the port of Toulon has never been blockaded by me: quite the reverse--every opportunity has been offered to the enemy to put to sea, for it is there that we hope to realize the hopes and expectations of our country, and I trust that they will not be disappointed." What Nelson here meant was that the so-called blockade of the port--it was a common, but, as he held, an erroneous expression--was merely incidental to the operation he was conducting. His main objective was the armed forces of the enemy lying unassailable within the blockaded port. He could not make them put to sea but he gave them every opportunity of doing so. So far from wishing to keep them in, his one desire was to get them out into the open, "for it is there that we hope to realize the hopes and expectations of our country"--that is to get a decision in favour of the British arms.

Now, this being the object of a military blockade, its methods will be subordinated to that object. In the days of sailing ships the method which commended itself to the best naval authorities of the time was to have an inshore squadron, consisting mainly of frigates and smaller craft, but strengthened if necessary by a few capital ships, generally two-deckers, closely watching the entrance to the port, but keeping outside the range of its land defences. This was supported at a greater distance in the offing by the main blockading fleet of heavier ships of the line, cruising within narrow limits and keeping close touch with the inshore squadron. Such a method is no longer practicable owing to the development of steam navigation, and to the introduction into naval warfare of the locomotive torpedo, and of special vessels designed to make the attack of this weapon extremely formidable and extremely difficult to parry. The inshore squadron of the old days was liable to no attack which it could not parry if in sufficient force, and if too hardly pressed it could always fall back on the main blockading fleet, which was unassailable except by a corresponding force of the enemy. The advent of the torpedo and of its characteristic craft has changed all this. No naval Power can now afford to place its battleships at a fixed station, or even in close touch with a fixed rendezvous, which is within reach of an enemy's torpedo craft. The torpedo vessel which operates only on the surface is, it is true, formidable only at night; in the daytime it is powerless in attack and extremely vulnerable. But the submarine is equally formidable in the daytime, and its attack even in the daytime is far more insidious and difficult to parry than that of the surface torpedo vessel is at night. The effective range of the surface torpedo vessel is thus, for practical purposes, half the distance which it can traverse in any given direction from its base between dusk and dawn--say from one hundred to two hundred miles, according to its speed and the season of the year. The speed of the submarine is much less, but it can keep the sea for many days together, sinking beneath the surface whenever it is threatened with attack. It can also approach a battleship or fleet of battleships in the same submerged condition, and experience has already demonstrated that its advance in that condition to within striking distance is extremely difficult to detect. Moreover, even if its presence is detected in time, the only certain defence against it is for the battleship to steam away from it at a speed greater than any submarine has ever attained or is likely to attain in the submerged condition. It should further be noted that torpedo craft engaged in offensive operations of this character are not confined to the blockaded port as a base. Any sheltered anchorage will serve their purpose, provided it is sufficiently fortified to resist such attacks from the sea as may be anticipated.

Thus, in the conditions established by the advent of the torpedo and its characteristic craft, there would seem to be only two alternatives open to a fleet of battleships engaged in blockade operations. Either it must be stationed in some sheltered anchorage outside the radius of action of the enemy's surface torpedo craft, and if within that radius adequately defended against torpedo attack--as Togo established a flying base for the use of his fleet, first at the Elliot Islands and afterwards at Dalny, for the purpose of blockading Port Arthur; or it must cruise in the open outside the same limits, keeping in touch with its advanced cruisers and flotillas by means of wireless telegraphy, and thereby dispensing with anything like a fixed rendezvous. It is not, perhaps, imperative that it should always cruise entirely outside the prescribed radius, because experience in modern naval manoeuvres has frequently shown that it is a very difficult thing for torpedo craft, moving at random, to discover a fleet which is constantly shifting its position at high speed, especially when they are at any moment liable to attack from cruisers and torpedo craft of the other side.

Thus a modern blockade will, so far as battle fleets are concerned, be of necessity rather a watching blockade than a masking or sealing up blockade. If the two belligerents are unequal in naval strength it will probably take some such form as the following. The weaker belligerent will at the outset keep his battle fleet in his fortified ports. The stronger may do the same, but he will be under no such paramount inducement to do so. Both sides will, however, send out their torpedo craft and supporting cruisers with intent to do as much harm as they can to the armed forces of the enemy. If one belligerent can get his torpedo craft to sea before the enemy is ready, he will, if he is the stronger of the two, forthwith attempt to establish as close and sustained a watch of the ports sheltering the enemy's armed forces as may be practicable; if he is the weaker, he will attempt sporadic attacks on the ports of his adversary and on such of his warships as may be found in the open. If the enemy is so incautious as to have placed any of his capital ships or other important craft in a position open to the assault of torpedo craft--as Russia did at Port Arthur at the opening of the war with Japan--or if he has been so lacking in vigilance and forethought as not to have taken timely and adequate measures for meeting sporadic attacks of the kind indicated, such attacks may be very effective and may even go so far to redress the balance of naval strength as to encourage the originally weaker belligerent to seek a decision in the open. But the forces of the stronger belligerent must be very badly handled and disposed for anything of the kind to take place. The advantage of superior force is a tremendous one. If it is associated with energy, determination, initiative, and skill of disposition no more than equal to those of the assailant, it is overwhelming. The sea-keeping capacity, or what has been called the enduring mobility, of torpedo craft, is comparatively small. Their coal-supply is limited, especially when they are steaming at full speed, and they carry no very large reserve of torpedoes. They must, therefore, very frequently return to a base to replenish their supplies. The superior enemy is, it is true, subject to the same disabilities, but being superior he has more torpedo craft to spare and more cruisers to attack the torpedo craft of the enemy and their own escort of cruisers. When the raiding torpedo craft return to their base he will make it very difficult for them to get in and just as difficult for them to get out again. He will suffer losses, of course, for there is no superiority of force that will confer immunity in that respect in war. But even between equal forces, equally well led and handled, there is no reason to suppose that the losses of one side will be more than equal to those of the other; whereas if one side is appreciably superior to the other it is reasonable to suppose that it will inflict greater losses on the enemy than it suffers itself, while even if the losses are equal the residue of the stronger force will still be greater than that of the weaker. It is true that the whole art of war, whether on sea or on land, consists in so disposing your armed forces, both strategically and tactically, that you may be superior to the enemy at the critical point and moment, and that success in this supreme art is no inherent prerogative of the belligerent whose aggregate forces are superior to those of his adversary. But this is only to say that success in war is not an affair of numbers alone. It is an affair of numbers combined with hard fighting and skilful disposition.

DISPUTED COMMAND--THE FLEET IN BEING

We have seen that blockade is only a means to an end, that end being the destruction or surrender of the armed forces of the enemy. We have seen also that that end cannot be obtained by blockade alone. All that a military blockade can do is by a judicious disposition of superior force, either to prevent the enemy coming out at all, or to secure that if he does come out he shall be brought to action. The former method is only applicable where the blockader's superiority of force is so great that his adversary cannot venture at the outset to encounter his main fleets in the open, and in that case the establishment of a blockade of this character is for many purposes practically tantamount to securing the command of the sea to the blockader so long as the blockade can be maintained. Such a situation, however, can very rarely arise. There are very few instances of it in naval history, and there are likely to be fewer in the future than there have been in the past. The closest blockade ever established and maintained was that of Brest by Cornwallis from 1803 to 1805, when Napoleon was projecting the invasion of England. Yet it would be too much to say that during those strenuous years Ganteaume never could have got out, had he been so minded, and it is not to be forgotten that for some time during the crisis of the campaign he was forbidden by Napoleon to make the attempt. Moreover, such a situation, even when it does arise, amounts at best to a stalemate, not to a checkmate. It leaves the enemy's fleet "a fleet in being," immobilized and wiped off the board for the moment, but nevertheless so operating as to immobilize the blockading fleet in so far as the chief effort of the latter must be concentrated on maintaining the blockade.

Now, of course, none of these objects could be attained unless the allied fleets in the Channel and adjacent waters could be either decisively defeated in the open or else so intimidated by the superior forces of the enemy as to decline a conflict and retire to some place of safety. On the broad principle that the paramount object of all warfare is the destruction of the armed forces of the enemy, Tourville, if he felt himself strong enough, was bound to seek out the allied fleet and challenge it to a decisive combat. On the same principle, Torrington, if he felt himself strong enough, was bound to pursue the same aggressive strategy, and by thoroughly beating the French to frustrate all their objects at once. But Torrington was not strong enough and knew that he was not strong enough. He had foreseen the crisis and warned his superiors betimes, entreating them to take adequate measures for dealing with it. They took no such measures. On the contrary, the dispositions they made were calculated rather to aggravate the danger than to avert it. Early in the year a fleet of sixteen sail of the line under Killigrew had been sent in charge of a convoy to Cadiz with orders to prevent, if possible, the exit of the Toulon fleet from the Mediterranean and to follow it up should it make good its escape. This strategy was unimpeachable if only Killigrew could make sure of intercepting Ch?teau-Renault and defeating him, and if the naval forces left in home waters when Killigrew was detached were sufficient to give a good account of the fleet that Tourville was collecting at Brest. But in its results it was disastrous, for Killigrew, delayed by weather and by the many preoccupations, commercial and strategic, entailed by his instructions was unable either to bar the passage of the Toulon fleet or to overtake it during its progress towards the Channel. Hence Ch?teau-Renault was able to effect his junction with Tourville unmolested, while Killigrew did not reach Plymouth until after the battle of Beachy Head had been fought, when, Tourville being victorious in the Channel, he was obliged to carry his squadron into the Hamoaze so as to be out of harm's way. Shovel, having escorted the king and his troops to Ireland, was equally unable to carry out his orders to join Torrington in the Channel, since Tourville stood in the way. Hence, although fully alive to the strategic value, in certain contingencies, of the forces under Killigrew and Shovel, Torrington was compelled to rely mainly on the force under his immediate command, the insufficiency of which he had many months before pointed out and vainly implored his superiors to redress.

The result of all this was that no adequate steps were, or could be, taken, to prevent the advance of Tourville in greatly superior force into the Channel. Torrington hoisted his flag in the Downs at the end of May, and even then the Dutch contingent had not joined in the numbers promised. Hence it was impossible to keep scouts out to the westward as the Dutch had undertaken to do, and the first definite intelligence that Torrington received of the advance of the French was the information that on June 23 they were anchored in great force to the westward of the Isle of Wight. Three days later, having in the meanwhile received a Dutch reinforcement bringing his force up to fifty-five sail of the line and twenty fire-ships, he offered them battle in that position, but it was declined. His own comment on this hazardous adventure may here be quoted: "I do acknowledge my first intention of attacking them, a rashness that will admit of no better excuse than that, though I did believe them stronger than we are, I did not believe it to so great a degree.... Their great strength and caution have put soberer thoughts into my head, and have made me very heartily give God thanks they declined the battle yesterday; and indeed I shall not think myself very unhappy if I can get rid of them without fighting, unless it may be upon equaller terms than I can at present see any prospect of.... A council of war I called this morning unanimously agreed we are by all manner of means to shun fighting with them, especially if they have the wind of us; and retire, if we cannot avoid it otherwise, even to the Gunfleet, the only place we can with any manner of probability make our account good with them in the condition we are in. We have now had a pretty good view of their fleet, which consists of near, if not quite, eighty men-of-war fit to lie in a line and thirty fire-ships; a strength that puts me beside hopes of success, if we should fight, and really may not only endanger the losing of the fleet, but at least the quiet of our country too; for if we are beaten they, being absolute masters of the sea, will be at great liberty of doing many things they dare not attempt while we observe them and are in a possibility of joining Vice-Admiral Killigrew and our ships to the westward. If I find a possibility, I will get by them to the westward to join those ships; if not, I mean to follow the result of the council of war."

The strategy here indicated is plain, and, in my judgment, sound. It may be profitably compared with that of Nelson as explained to his captains during his return from the West Indies whither he had pursued Villeneuve. Villeneuve was on his way back to European waters and Nelson hoped to overtake him. He had eleven ships of the line in his fleet and Villeneuve was known to have not less than eighteen. Yet, though Nelson did not shrink from an engagement on his own terms, he was resolved not to force one inopportunely. "Do not," he said to his captains, "imagine I am one of those hot-brained people who fight at immense disadvantage without an adequate object. My object is partly gained"--that is, Villeneuve had been driven out of the West Indies. "If we meet them we shall find them not less than eighteen, I rather think twenty, sail of the line, and therefore do not be surprised if I do not fall on them immediately; we won't part without a battle. I think they will be glad to leave me alone, if I will let them alone; which I will do, either till we approach the shores of Europe, or they give an advantage too tempting to be resisted." Torrington's attitude was the same as Nelson's, except perhaps that he lacked the ardent faith to say with Nelson, "We won't part without a battle." He would not think himself very unhappy if he could get rid of Tourville without a battle. But the situations of the two men were different. Nelson knew, as he said himself, that "by the time that the enemy has beat our fleet soundly, they will do us no harm this year." If, that is, by the sacrifice of eleven ships of his own he could wipe out eighteen or twenty of the enemy, destroying some and disabling as many as he could of the rest, he would leave the balance of naval force still strongly in favour of his country, more strongly in fact than if he fought no action at all. Torrington, on the other hand, knew that "if we are beaten they, being absolute masters of the sea, will be at great liberty of doing many things they dare not attempt while we observe them and are in a possibility of joining Vice-Admiral Killigrew and our ships to the westward." Killigrew and Shovel had twenty-two sail of the line between them, and Torrington, in the dispatch above quoted, had requested that they should be ordered to advance to Portsmouth, whence, if the French pursued him to the eastward, they might be able to join him "over the flats" of the Thames. As he had fifty-five sail of the line himself, with a possibility of reinforcements from Chatham, the concentration off the Thames of the whole of the forces available would have enabled him to encounter Tourville on something like equal terms; and from that, assuredly, he would not have shrunk. Meanwhile he would wait, watch, observe, and pursue a defensive strategy. If Tourville should withdraw to the westward he would follow him and get past him if he could, and in that case, having picked up Killigrew and Shovel, he would be in a position to take the offensive on no very unequal terms and not to part from Tourville without a battle.

The truth is, that the doctrine of the fleet in being, as understood and illustrated by Torrington, is in reality the counterpart and complement of the doctrine of the command of the sea as expounded above. "I consider," said the late Sir Geoffrey Hornby, a strategist and tactician of unrivalled authority in his time, "that I have command of the sea when I am able to tell my Government that they can move an expedition to any point without fear of interference from an enemy's fleet." This condition cannot be satisfied so long as the enemy has a fleet in being, that is a fleet strategically at large, not itself in command of the sea, but strong enough to deny that command to its adversary by strategic and tactical dispositions adapted to the circumstances of the case. Thus command of the sea and a fleet in being are mutually exclusive terms. So long as a hostile fleet is in being there is no command of the sea; so soon as the command of the sea is established there is no hostile fleet in being. Each of these propositions is the complement of the other.

DISPUTED COMMAND IN GENERAL

For what is it that a nation seeks to do when it attempts to exercise or secure the command of the sea? It seeks to do nothing more and nothing less than to deny freedom of access to the waters in dispute to the ships, whether warships or merchant ships, of some other nation. It denies the common right of highway, which is the essential attribute of the sea, to that other nation, and seeks to secure the monopoly of that right for itself. In other words, it seeks to drive its adversary's warships from the sea, and either by the capture of his merchant vessels to appropriate the wealth they contain or by destroying them to deprive the adversary of its enjoyment. This is all that naval warfare as such can do. If the enemy is not constrained by the destruction of his warships and the extinction of his maritime commerce to submit to his victorious adversary's will, other agencies, not exclusively naval in character, must be employed to bring about that consummation. This means that military force must be brought into operation, either for the invasion of the defeated adversary's territory or for the occupation of some of his possessions lying across the seas, if he has any. If he has none, or if such as he has are not worth taking or holding--either as a permanent possession or as what is called a material guarantee to be used in the subsequent negotiations for peace--then the only alternative is invasion. But that is a subject which demands a chapter to itself.

Applying these principles to the defence of the British Empire we see at once that the command of the sea, in the sense already defined, is essential to its successful prosecution. The case is not merely exceptional, it is absolutely unique. The British Isles might recover from the effects of a successful invasion, as other countries have done in like case. But the destruction of their maritime commerce would ruin them irretrievably, even if no invasion were undertaken. Half the maritime commerce of the world is carried on under the British flag. The whole of that commerce would be suppressed if an enemy once secured the command of the sea. The British Isles would be starved out in a few weeks. Whether an enemy so situated would decide to invade or invest--that is, so to impede our commerce that only an insignificant fraction of it could by evasion reach our ports--is a question not so much of strategy as of the economics of warfare. But really it hardly matters a pin which he decided to do. We should have to submit in either case. What would happen to our Dominions, Dependencies, and Colonies is plain. Those which are defenceless the enemy would seize if he thought it worth his while. In the case supposed they could obtain no military assistance from the mother-country. But those which could defend themselves he would have to overcome, if he could, by fighting. The great Dominions of the Empire would not fall into an enemy's lap merely because he had compelled the United Kingdom to sue for peace. To subdue them by force of arms would be a very formidable undertaking.

The truth is, that in all the larger achievements of sea power--those, that is, to which a combination of naval and military force is indispensable--it is impossible to disengage the influence of one of these factors on the final issue from that of the other, and perhaps idle to attempt do to so. They act, as it were, like a chemical combination, not like the resultant of two separate but correlated mechanical forces, and their joint effect may be just as different from what might be the effect of either acting separately as water is different from the oxygen and hydrogen of which it is composed. But their operation in this wise can only begin after the command of the sea has been secured, or at least has been so far established as to reduce to a negligible quantity the risk of conducting military operations across seas of which the command is still nominally in dispute. Now there are several phases or stages in the enterprise of securing the command of the sea; but they all depend on the power and the will to fight for it. There is no absolute command of the sea, except in the case of hostilities between two belligerents, separated by the sea, one of whom has no naval force at all. The solitary case in history of this situation is that of the War in South Africa. A similar situation would arise if one of two belligerents had completely destroyed all the effective naval force of the other. But that is a situation of which history affords few, if any, examples. Between these two extremes lies the whole history of naval warfare.

There is, moreover, one characteristic of naval warfare which has no exact counterpart in the conduct of military enterprises on land. This is the power which a naval belligerent has of withdrawing his sea-going force out of the reach of the sea-going force of the enemy by placing it in sheltered harbours too strongly fortified for the enemy to reduce by naval power alone. The only effective answer to this which the superior belligerent can make is, as has already been shown, to establish a blockade of the ports in question. This procedure is analogous to, but not identical with, the investment by military forces of a fortress in which an army has found shelter in the interior of the enemy's country. But the essential difference is that the land fortress can be completely invested so that no food or other supplies can reach it, whereas a sea fortress cannot, unless it is situated on a small island, be completely invested by naval force alone. In the one case, even if no assault is attempted, starvation must sooner or later bring about the surrender of the fortress together with any military force it contains, whereas in the other the blockaded port being, as a rule, in open communication with its own national territory, cannot be reduced by starvation. Moreover, for reasons already explained, a maritime fortress cannot nowadays be so closely blockaded as to prevent the exit of small craft almost at all times or even to prevent the exit of squadrons of battleships in circumstances favourable to the enterprise. Now the exit of small craft equipped for torpedo attack is a much more serious threat to the blockader than the exit of small craft, not so equipped, was in the old days of close blockade. In those days small craft could do no harm to ships of the line or even to frigates, whereas a torpedo craft is nowadays in certain circumstances the equal and more than the equal of a battleship. For these reasons the escape from a blockaded port of a squadron of battleships might easily be regarded by the blockading enemy as a less serious and even much more welcome incident of the campaign than the frequent issue of swarms of torpedo craft skilfully handled, daringly navigated, and sternly resolved to do or die in the attempt to reduce the battle superiority of the enemy.

Here, then, is a case in which the doctrine of the command of the sea and the principle of the fleet in being might seem to be violated in a crucial fashion. But the men who directed the arms of England in those days knew what they were about. Long before they allowed the expedition to start they had established a close and, as they thought, an effective blockade of all the Atlantic and Mediterranean ports in which either French or Spanish warships ready for sea were to be found. Nevertheless we have here a signal illustration of the essential difference between a command of the sea which has been made absolute by the destruction of the enemy's available naval forces--as was practically the case after Trafalgar--and one which is only virtual and potential, because, although the enemy's fleets have for the time been masked or sealed up in their ports, they may, should the fortune of war so determine, resume at any time the position and functions of a true fleet in being. On the strength of a command of the sea of this merely contingent and potential character Pitt and his naval advisers had persuaded themselves that the way to the Mediterranean was open for the transit of troops. Craig's transports, accordingly, put to sea on April 19. But a week before Villeneuve with his fleet had left Toulon for the last time, had evaded Nelson's watch, and passing rapidly through the Straits, had called off Cadiz, and picking up such Spanish ships as were there had disappeared into space, no man knowing whither he had gone. He might have gone to the East Indies, he might have gone to the West Indies, as in fact he did, or he might be cruising unmolested in waters where he could hardly fail to come across Craig's transports with their weak escort of two ships of the line. It was a situation which no one had foreseen or regarded as more than a contingency too remote to be guarded against when Craig's expedition was allowed to start. How Nelson viewed the situation may be seen from his reply to the Admiralty, written on his receipt of the first intimation that the expedition was about to start.

Yet it very nearly miscarried at the outset. Nelson and Barham--between them a combination of warlike energy and strategic insight, without a parallel in the history of naval warfare--both realized the tremendous risks it ran. It may be argued that had Villeneuve gone to the north he would have found himself in the thick of British squadrons closing in on Brest and vastly superior in force. Yet Allemand, who had escaped a few weeks later from Rochefort, was able to cruise in these very waters for over five months without being brought to book. It is true that the destruction or capture of five thousand British troops would not seriously have affected the larger issues of the naval campaign, but it would have broken up the coalition with Russia by which Pitt set so much store, and which Mr Corbett at any rate represents as having exercised a decisive influence on the ultimate fortunes of Napoleon. The moral of the whole story seems to be that competent strategists--for the world has known none more competent and none more intrepid than Nelson and Barham--will not risk even a minor expedition at sea unless its line of advance is sufficiently controlled by superior naval force to ensure its unmolested transit. The principle thus exhibited in the case of a minor expedition manifestly applies with immensely increased force to those larger expeditions which assume the dimensions of an invasion. It was not until long after Trafalgar had been fought, and the command of the sea had been secured beyond the possibility of challenge, that the campaigns in the Peninsula were undertaken--campaigns which ended and were always intended to end, should the fortune of war so decree, in the invasion of France and the overthrow of Napoleon. This opens up the whole question of invasion, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

INVASION

England has not been invaded since A.D. 1066, when, the country having no fleet in being, William the Conqueror effected a landing and subjugated the kingdom. During the eight centuries and more that have since elapsed, every country in Europe has been invaded and its capital occupied, in many cases more than once. It is by no means for lack of attempts to invade her that England has been spared the calamity of invasion for more than eight hundred years. It is not because she has had at all times--it may indeed be doubted if she has had at any time--organized military force sufficient to repel an invader, if he could not be stopped at sea. It is because she can only be invaded across the sea, and because whenever the attempt has been made she has always had naval force sufficient to bring the enterprise to nought. It is merely a truism to say that the invasion of hostile territory across the sea is a much more difficult and hazardous enterprise than the crossing of a land frontier by organized military force. But it is no truism to say that the reason why it is so much more difficult and more hazardous is that there is no real parallel between the two cases. I assume a vigorous defensive on the part of the adversary assailed in both cases--a defensive which, though commonly so called, is really offensive in its nature. The essential difference lies in this, that two countries which are separated by the sea have no common frontier. Each has its own frontier at the limit of its territorial waters, but between these two there lies a region common to both and from which neither can be excluded except by the superior naval force of the other.

For the moment an expeditionary force emerges from its own territorial waters--which may be any distance from a few miles up to many thousands of miles from the territorial waters of the adversary to be assailed--it must be prepared to defend itself, and naval force alone can afford it an adequate measure of defence. Military forces embarked in transports are defenceless and practically unarmed. They cannot defend themselves with their own arms, nor can the transports which carry them be so armed as to afford adequate defence against the smallest warship afloat, least of all against torpedo craft. Hence, unless the sea to be traversed has been cleared of the naval forces of the enemy beforehand, the invading military force must be covered by a naval force sufficient to overcome any naval force which the enemy is able to bring against it. If the latter can bring a fleet--as he must be able to do if the invasion is to be prevented--the covering fleet must be able to beat any fleet that he can bring. That condition being satisfied, however, it is clear that the covering fleet must be terribly hampered and handicapped in the ensuing conflict by the presence of a huge and unwieldy assemblage of unarmed transports filled with disarmed men, and by the consequent necessity of defending it against the attack of those portions of the enemy's naval force to which, albeit not suitable for engaging in the principal conflict, the transports would offer an otherwise defenceless prey. Hence the escorting fleet must be stronger than its adversary in a far larger proportion than it need be if naval issues pure and simple were alone at stake--so strong indeed that, if the transports were out of the way, its victory might be taken as certain. But if that is so it is manifest that the prospects of successful invasion would be immeasurably improved by seeking to decide the naval issue first--as Tourville very properly did in the Beachy Head campaign--and keeping the transports in hand and in port until it had been decided in favour of the intending invader. This is the eternal dilemma of invasion across a sea of which the command has not previously been secured. If you are not strong enough to dispose of the enemy's naval force you are certainly not strong enough to escort an invading force--itself helpless afloat--across the sea in his teeth. If you are strong enough to do this you will certainly be wise to beat him first, because then there will be nothing left to prevent the transit of your troops. In other words, command of the sea, if not absolutely and in all cases indispensable to a successful invasion, is at any rate the only certain way of ensuring its success.

Again, Napoleon's descent on Egypt is another exception which proves the rule, and proves it still more conclusively. Napoleon evaded Nelson's fleet and landed his army in Egypt. The army so landed left Egypt in British transports, having laid down its arms and surrendered just before the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens; and but for the timely conclusion of that short-lived armistice, every French soldier who survived the Egyptian campaign might have seen the inside of a British prison. This was because Napoleon, who never fathomed the secrets of the sea, chose to think that to evade a hostile fleet was the same thing as to defeat it. He managed for a time to escape Nelson's attentions by the skin of his teeth, and fondly fancied that because he had done so the dominion of the East was won. He was quickly undeceived by the Battle of the Nile. That victory destroyed the fleet which had escorted his army to Egypt and thereby made it impossible for the army ever to return except by consent of the Power which he never could vanquish on the sea. The Battle of the Nile, wrote a Frenchman in Egypt, "is a calamity which leaves us here as children totally lost to the mother country. Nothing but peace can restore us to her." Nothing but the so-called Peace of Amiens did restore them. If it be argued, as it often has been, that Napoleon's successful descent on Egypt proves that military enterprises of large moment may sometimes be undertaken without first securing the command of the sea to be traversed, surely the Battle of the Nile and its sequel are a triumphant refutation of such an argument. Such enterprises are merely a roundabout way of presenting the belligerent who retains the command of the sea with as many prisoners of war as survive from the original expedition.

I need not labour the point which the unbroken testimony of history from the time of the Norman Conquest has established, that all attempts to invade England have been made in the past and must be made in the future across a sea not commanded by the intending invader. If he has secured the command of the sea beforehand, there is nothing to prevent the invasion except the consideration that he can attain his end--that is, the subjugation of the nation's will--at less cost to himself. That being premised, let us consider how the intending invader will set about his task. There are three ways, and three ways only. First, he may seek to overpower the British naval defence on the seas, that is to obtain the command of the sea. If he can do that, the whole thing is done. Or secondly, he may collect the military forces destined for the invasion in ports suitable for the purpose, and when all is ready he may cover their embarkation and transit by a naval force sufficient to overcome any naval force which this country can direct against it. I have already shown, however, that a force sufficient to do this with any certainty, or even with any reasonable prospect of success, must needs be more than sufficient to overpower the British naval defence and thereby to secure the command of the sea, if the enemy were freed from the entangling and wellnigh disabling necessity of providing for the safe conduct of an unwieldy host of otherwise defenceless transports. In other words he is putting the cart before the horse, a procedure which has never yet succeeded in getting the cart to its destination. This second alternative is then merely a clumsy and extremely inefficient way of attaining the same end as the first, and need only be mentioned in order to exclude it from further consideration.

One more illustration may be cited, and I will treat it at some length, because it presents certain features which give it peculiar significance in relation to current controversies. This is the projected invasion of England by France in 1744. It is, so far as I know, the solitary instance in our naval history which shows the enemy framing his plans on the lines of what is now known as "a bolt from the blue"--that is, he projected a surprise invasion, at a time when the two countries were nominally at peace, in the hope that the first overt act of the war he was contemplating might be the landing of his troops on British soil. In 1743, when this project was conceived, England and France were, as I have said, nominally at peace, but troops belonging to both had fought at Dettingen, not in any direct quarrel of their own, but because England was supporting Maria Theresa and France was supporting her enemies. The fleets of both Powers were jealously watching each other in the Mediterranean, a situation which led early in 1744 to the too notorious action of Mathews off Toulon. Nevertheless, until the very end of 1743 no direct conflict with France was anticipated by the English Government.

Yet France was already secretly preparing her "bolt from the blue." She had resolved to support the Pretender's cause and to prepare an invasion of England in which the Pretender's son was to take part, and on landing in England to rally his party to the overthrow of the Hanoverian dynasty. The bolt was to be launched from Dunkirk and directed at the Thames, the intention being to land the invading force at Blackwall. Some ten thousand French troops to be employed in the expedition were sent into winter-quarters in and around Dunkirk, but this aroused no suspicion in England, because this region was the natural place for the left flank of the French army to winter in, and Dunkirk contained no transports at the time. Transports were, however, being taken up under false charter-parties at French ports on the Atlantic and in the Channel, and were ordered as soon as ready to rendezvous secretly and separately at Dunkirk. At first the intention was for the expeditionary force to make its attempt without any support from the French fleet. But Marshal Saxe, who was to command it and knew that the Thames and its adjacent waters were never denuded of naval force sufficient to make short work of a fleet of unarmed transports, flatly declined to entertain this project and demanded adequate naval support for the enterprise. Accordingly a powerful fleet, held to be sufficient to contain or defeat any British fleet that was thought likely to be able to challenge it, was fitted out with all secrecy at Brest and placed under the command of De Roquefeuil. Even he was not told its destination, and false rumours on the subject were allowed to circulate among those who were concerned in its preparation.

So far everything seemed to be going well. The blow was timed for the first week in January, but the usual delays occurred, and for a month or more after the date originally fixed, the expeditionary force and its escort were separated by the whole length of northern France. Yet even before the date originally fixed, England had got wind of the preparations. From the middle of December Brest had been kept under watch, and orders had been issued to the dockyards to prepare for sea as many ships of the line as were available. These preparations were continued, without intermission, until the end of January, the purpose and destination of the armament at Brest still being unknown. Then two alarming pieces of intelligence reached England at the same time. One was that Roquefeuil had put to sea on January 26 with twenty-one sail of the line, and before being lost sight of by the British cruiser told off to watch him, had been seen to be clearly standing to the northward. The other was that Prince Charles, the son of the Pretender, had left Rome and had landed without hindrance in France. This, being a direct violation of the Treaty of Utrecht, was naturally held to give to the sailing of the Brest fleet the complexion of a direct hostile intent. It was on February 1 that these facts were known, and on February 2, Sir John Norris, a veteran of Barfleur and La Hogue, who was now well over eighty years of age, but as the event showed was still fully equal to the task entrusted to him, was ordered to hoist his flag at Portsmouth and to "take the most effectual measures to prevent the making of any descent on the Kingdoms." Norris hoisted his flag on the 6th, and by the 18th he had eighteen sail of the line under his command. Subsequently his force was increased to twenty. Nothing was known of the movements of the French fleet since January 29, when the frigate set to watch it had finally lost sight of it. It was in fact still off the mouth of the Channel, baffled by adverse winds and gales and vainly seeking to make headway against them. If it had gone to the Mediterranean, Mathews off Toulon would be placed in grave jeopardy, and there were some projects for detaching a powerful squadron of Norris's ships to his support. If, on the other hand, it was aiming at the Channel, Norris with his whole force would be none too strong to encounter and defeat it. This was Norris's dilemma, and it was not until February 9 that he learned from the Duke of Newcastle that an embargo had been laid on all shipping at Dunkirk, where some fifty vessels of one hundred and fifty to two hundred tons had by this time assembled. These might at a pinch and for a short transit be estimated to be capable of transporting some ten thousand troops. But an embargo, although clear proof of hostile intent, was not necessarily a sign of impending invasion. It was a common expedient, preliminary to war, whereby you deprived your enemy of ships and men very necessary to his purposes and secured ships and men equally necessary to your own. Hence no strategic connexion could with any certainty be held to exist between the embargo at Dunkirk and the sailing of the French fleet from Brest. On the other hand it was clearly dangerous to uncover the Channel so long as the destination of the Brest fleet was unknown, and, although Newcastle had suggested to Norris that he should divide his fleet and send the major part of it to reinforce Mathews in the Mediterranean, yet Norris strongly demurred to the suggestion, and before the time came to act on it the situation had so far developed as to disallow it altogether. On February 11, Norris received information that a French fleet of at least sixteen sail of the line had been seen the day before off the Start. This convinced him that the French had some scheme to the eastward in hand; and as he had frigates watching the Channel between the Isle of Wight and Cape Barfleur he was equally convinced that the French had so far no appreciable armed force to the eastward of him. Newcastle, however, did not share this conviction. He had received numerous reports of movements of French ships in the Channel to the eastward of the Isle of Wight and other information which pointed to a concentration at Dunkirk. As a matter of fact no French men-of-war were at this time east of the Isle of Wight, and the vessels reported to Newcastle must have been transports making for Dunkirk and magnified into ships of the line by the fog of war. Newcastle, accordingly, ordered Norris to go forthwith to the Downs. Foul winds prevented Norris from sailing at once from St Helen's, and on the 13th, the day before he did sail, he received further information which confirmed his conviction that the French were still to the westward. But Newcastle's orders remained peremptory, and on the 14th he sailed with eighteen ships, and anchored in the Downs on the 17th. There he found two more ships awaiting him, while two others were on their way to join him from Plymouth.

I pause here for a moment to point out that Norris's desire, over-ruled by Newcastle, to remain at Portsmouth was thoroughly well advised. He knew that there was naval force enough in the Thames and the Downs to dispose of any expedition coming from Dunkirk unless it were escorted by the Brest fleet, or by a very considerable detachment therefrom. He was well assured that no such detachment could have eluded the vigilance of his frigates, and he felt that in these circumstances he could better impeach Roquefeuil by lying in wait for him at Spithead or St Helen's than by preceding him to the Downs. How right he was in this appreciation will be seen from a closer consideration of the movements of the French fleet. It was not until February 13 that Roquefeuil received his final orders off the Start. He was directed to detach De Baraille, his second in command, with five ships. These were to go forthwith to Dunkirk and escort Saxe's expedition, while he himself with the remainder of his fleet was to blockade Norris at Portsmouth and defeat him if he could. But Roquefeuil and his council of war found these orders too hazardous for execution. They resolved not to divide the fleet until at least Norris, presumed to be at Portsmouth, had been disposed of. On the 17th, the day on which Norris had anchored in the Downs, they looked into Spithead and persuaded themselves that they had seen Norris there with eleven sail of the line. Judging that the weather was too bad for a successful blockade, Roquefeuil then passed on up the Channel, convinced that Norris was now behind him with too weak a force to be of any effect. Baraille was then sent on with his detachment to Dunkirk, but by this time Saxe had lost heart and declined to sail until Roquefeuil's whole fleet was at hand to escort him.

To point the moral of this memorable story, I cannot do better than quote Mr Julian Corbett's comment on it. "The whole attempt, it will be seen, with everything in its favour, had exhibited the normal course of degradation. For all the nicely framed plan and perfect deception, the inherent difficulties, when it came to the point of execution, had as usual forced a clumsy concentration of the enemy's battle fleet with his transports, and we on our part were able to forestall it with every advantage in our favour by the simple expedient of a central mass on a revealed and certain line of passage." We were certainly taken at a disadvantage at the outset, for the "bolt from the blue" was preparing some time before any one in England got wind of it. The country had been largely denuded of troops for foreign enterprises, Scotland was deeply disaffected, the Jacobites were full of hope and intrigue, the Ministry was supine and feeble, the navy was deplorably weak in home waters, and such ships as were available had been dispersed to their ports for refit. Nevertheless with all these conditions in its favour the projected "bolt from the blue" was detected and anticipated--tardily, it is true, and with no great sagacity except on the part of Norris--long before the expedition was ready to start. Surely the moral needs no further pointing.

COMMERCE IN WAR

The maritime trade of a nation at war has always been regarded by the other belligerent as his legitimate prey. In the Dutch Wars the suppression of the enemy's commerce was the main objective of both parties to the conflict. In all wars in which either belligerent has any commerce afloat worth considering one belligerent may always be expected to do all that he can for its capture or suppression, while the other will do as much as he can for its defence. In proportion to the volume and value of the national trade afloat is the potency of its destruction as an agency for bringing the national will into submission. If, for example, the maritime trade of England could be suppressed by her enemies, England would thereby be vanquished. Her commerce is her life-blood. On the other hand there are nations, very powerful in war, which either by reason of their geographical position, or because their oversea trade is no vital element in their national economy, would suffer comparatively little in like circumstances. It thus appears that the volume and value of the national trade afloat is the measure of the efforts which an enemy is likely to make for its suppression. But it is not directly the measure of the efforts which a nation so assailed must make for its defence. The measure of these efforts is determined not by the volume and value of the trade to be protected but by the amount and character of the naval force which the enemy can employ in assailing it. In the Boer War British maritime commerce was unassailed and uninterrupted in all parts of the world, and yet not a single ship of the British Navy was directly employed in its protection. If on the other hand England were at war with a naval Power of the first rank, she might have to employ the whole of her naval resources in securing the free transit of her maritime commerce. So long as she can do this with success she need give no thought to the menace of possible invasion. A command of the sea so far established as to secure freedom of transit for the vast and ubiquitous maritime commerce of this country is also, of necessity, so far established as to deny free transit to the transports of an enemy seeking to invade. The greater includes the less.

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