An instant offensive is obligatory. Mahan truly says:—
“The assumption of a simple defensive in war is ruin. War, once declared, must be waged offensively, aggressively. The enemy must not be fended off, but smitten down. You may then spare him every exaction, relinquish every gain. But till down he must be struck incessantly and remorselessly.”[1]
All will depend on the instant start, the sudden blow! Napoleon again, “Frappez vite et frappez fort!” That was the whole of his orders.
The question of armament is all-important!
If we have the advantage of speed, which is the first desideratum in every class of fighting vessel (Battleships included), then, and then only, we can choose our distance for fighting. If we can choose our distance for fighting, then we can choose our armament for fighting! But how in the past has the armament been chosen? Do we arrange the armament to meet the proposed mode of fighting? Doesn’t it sometimes look like so many of each sort, as if you were peopling the Ark, and wanted representatives of all calibres?
Whoever hits soonest and oftenest will win!
“The effectiveness of a fighting weapon,” wrote Mahan, “consists more in the method of its use and in the practised skill of the human element that wields it than in the material perfection of the weapon itself. The sequel of a long period of peace is a demoralisation of ideals. Those who rise in peace are men of formality and routine, cautious, inoffensive, safe up to the limits of their capacity, supremely conscientious, punctilious about everything but what is essential, yet void altogether of initiative, impulse and originality.
“This was the difference between Hawke and Matthews. Hawke represented the spirit of war, the ardour, the swift initiative, the readiness of resource, the impatience of prescription and routine, without which no great things are done! Matthews, the spirit of peace, the very reverse of all this!”
Peace brings with it the reign of old men.
The sacred fire never burnt in Collingwood. Nelson, with the instinct of genius, intended the Fleet to anchor, turning the very dangers of the shoals of Trafalgar into a security. Collingwood, simply a naval machine, and never having been his own master all his life, and not being a genius, thought a shoal was a thing to be avoided, and, consequently, wrecked the ships unfitted to cope with a gale, and so to weather these shoals! Collingwood ought to have had the moon given him for his crest, for all his glory was reflected from Nelson, the sun of glory! Collingwood was an old woman!