If our estimate of the situation should lead us to the decision that we must prepare our navy in such a way that, say twenty years hence, it will be able to protect the country against any enemy, we shall then instinctively adopt a policy. The fact of having ahead of us a definite, difficult thing to do, will at once take us out of the region of guesswork, and force us into logical methods. We shall realize the problem in its entirety; we shall see the relation of one part to another, and of all the parts to the whole; we shall realize that the deepest study of the wisest men must be devoted to it, as it is in all maritime countries except our own. The very difficulties of the problem, the very scope and greatness of it, the fact that national failure or national success will hinge on the way we solve it, will call into action the profoundest minds in all the nation. We shall realize that, more than any other problem before the country, this problem is urgent; because in no other problem have we so much lost time to make up for, and in no other work of the government are we so far behind the great nations that we may have to contend against.
Great Britain was startled into a correct estimate of the situation ten years ago, and at once directed perhaps the best of her ability to meet it. Certain it is that no other department of the British Government is in such good condition as the navy; in no other department has the problem been so thoroughly understood, and so conscientiously worked out, or the success been so triumphant.
The underlying reason for this is not so much the individual courage and ability of the officers and men, or even their skill in handling their ships and squadrons, as the fact that Great Britain has followed a definite naval policy; so that the British nation has had a perfectly clear realization of what it wishes the navy to do, and the navy has had a perfectly clear realization of how to do it.
The United States has not yet made a correct estimate of the naval situation; she has not yet reached the point that Great Britain reached ten years ago. Great Britain apprehended the danger, and took action before it was too late. Shall the United States take action now or wait until it is too late?
PART II
NAVAL STRATEGY
[CHAPTER VII]
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
Strategy is difficult of definition; but though many definitions have been made, and though they do not agree together very well, yet all agree that strategy is concerned with the preparation of military forces for war and for operating them in war—while tactics is the immediate instrument for handling them in battle. Strategy thinks out a situation beforehand, and decides what preparations as to material, personnel, and operations should be made.
Many books have been written on strategy, meaning strategy as applied to armies, but very few books have been written on naval strategy. The obvious reasons are that armies in the past have been much larger and more important than navies; that naval men have only recently had the appliances on board ship for writing on an extensive scale; and that the nature of their occupation has been such that continuous application of the kind needed for thinking out principles and expounding them in books, has only recently been possible.