[CHAPTER XVII]
SOME STRATEGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Soundly considered, any great strategical problem is a matter of:
1. Naval and military strength; rarely exercised separately but usually in combination.
2. Disposition of fortified stations and of bases of supplies.
3. The economic and political conditions of countries concerned.
Such phrases as the "Blue-water School of Strategy" are either misleading, inasmuch as they give an incorrect impression of the ideas of the people described as belonging to such a school, wrongly representing them as considering naval strength, and naval strength alone, in a problem of attack and defence; or else they rightly describe an altogether incorrect conception of strategy. It will be found on examination of any great typical struggle between nations that all three matters I have mentioned have usually entered into the final determination of the issue; that superior military or naval force has often been countered by superior disposition of fortresses, fitting stations, and supply bases: that sometimes clear superiority both in armaments and disposition of armaments has been countered by greater financial and industrial resources and more resolute national character.
On all questions of strategy the Napoleonic wars will provide leading cases, for Napoleon brought to his campaigns the full range of weapons—military, naval, political, economic; and his early victories were won as much by the audaciously new reading he gave to the politics of war as to his skill in military strategy and in tactics. It would be a fascinating task to imagine a Napoleon setting his mind to a consideration of the strategy of the Pacific with all its vast problems. But since to give to "strategy" its properly wide definition would be to deal again in this chapter with many matters already fully discussed, I propose to touch upon it here in a much narrower sense, and suggest certain of the more immediate strategical problems, particularly in regard to the disposition of fortified stations and bases of supplies.