What, in fact, is the inherent weakness of close blockade? Strategical theory will at once reply that it is an operation which involves "an arrest of the offensive," a situation which is usually taken to exhibit every kind of drawback. Close blockade is essentially an offensive operation, although its object is usually negative; that is, it is a forward movement to prevent the enemy carrying out some offensive operation either direct or by way of counterstroke. So far the common tendency to confuse "Seeking out the enemy's fleet" with "Making the enemy's coast your frontier" may be condoned. But the two operations are widely different in that they have different objectives. In "seeking out," our objective is the enemy's armed force. In "making the enemy's coast our frontier," the objective is inseparable from the ulterior object of the naval war. In this case the objective is the common communications. By establishing a blockade we operate offensively against those communications. We occupy them, and then we can do no more. Our offensive is arrested; we cannot carry it on to the destruction of the enemy's fleet. We have to wait in a defensive attitude, holding the communications we have seized, till he chooses to attack in order to break our hold; and during that period of arrest the advantage of surprise—the all-important advantage in war—passes by a well recognised rule to our enemy. We, in fact, are held upon the defensive, with none of the material advantages of the defensive. The moral advantage of having taken the initiative remains, but that is all. The advantage which we thus gain will of course have the same kind of depressing effect upon the
blockaded fleet as it had of old, but scarcely in so high a degree. The degradation of a steam fleet in port can scarcely be so rapid or debilitating as it was when nine-tenths of seamanship lay in the smart handling of sails. For the blockading fleet it is also true that the effects of weather, which formerly were the main cause of wear and tear, can scarcely be so severe. But, on the other hand, the physical strain to officers and men, and the difficulty of supply, will be far greater, so long at least as coal is the chief fuel. The wind no longer sets a measure on the enemy's movements. Vigilance close and unremitting beyond all our predecessors knew is the portion of the blockaders to prevent surprise. Furthermore, in the old days surprise meant at worst the enemy's escape; now it may mean our own destruction by mine or torpedo. It is unnecessary to labour the point. It is too obvious that a close blockade of the old type exhibits under present conditions the defects of "arrested offence" in so high a degree as practically to prohibit its use.
What, then, can be done? Must we rest content in all situations with Howe's system, which riper experience condemned for cases of extreme necessity? Cannot the old close blockade be given a modern form? Assuredly it can. In old days the shoreward limit of the blockading fleet was just beyond the range of the coast batteries, and this position it held continuously by means of an inshore squadron. In these days of mobile defence that limit is by analogy the night range of destroyers and the day range of submarines, that is, half the distance they can traverse between dark and dawn or dawn and dark respectively, unless within that limit a torpedo-proof base can be established. A blockade of this nature will correspond in principle to a close blockade of the old type; nor in practice, as was proved in the Japanese blockade of Port Arthur, will its incidents be materially different. The distance at which the battle-squadron must keep will seem at first sight to deny it certainty of immediate contact—the essence
of close blockade. But in truth other new factors already noticed will reduce that distance relatively. Quicker and more certain means of communication between the admiral and his scouts, the absolute freedom of movement and the power of delaying the enemy's actual exit by mining, may go far to bring things back to their old relations. At Port Arthur they did so entirely. If then, as in that case, our paramount object is to keep the enemy in, there seems still no reason why we should not make our dispositions on the principle of close blockade. Distances will be greater, but that is all.
Nor must it be forgotten that for a squadron to take station off a port in the old manner is not the only means of close blockade. It may still effect its purpose, at least temporarily, by supporting mining vessels or block ships—"sinkers," as they used to be called. The latter expedient, it is true, had little success in the latest experiments, but even in the Russo-Japanese War its possibilities were by no means exhausted. We have therefore to conclude that where the strategical conditions call obviously for close blockade, our plan of operations will be modified in that direction with the means still at our disposal.
If, however, our object is not so sharply defined, if in spite of our desire to deny the enemy the sea we are ready to take risks in order to bring about a decision, the case is not so clear. It will be observed that the looseness which the new conditions force upon close blockade-increasing as they are in intensity year by year-must tend more and more to approximate it in practice to open blockade. The question will therefore present itself whether it would not be more in accordance with the fundamental elements of strength to adopt open blockade frankly for all purposes. We should thus substitute a true defensive disposition for an arrested offence, and, theoretically, that in itself is a great advantage. The practical benefits, whatever the correlative drawbacks, are
equally clear, nor are they less great now than they appeared to Howe and Kempenfelt. We avoid exhaustion of machinery, coal, and men, and this, at least for the necessary flotilla screen, will be greater than anything that had to be faced in former days. We have at least the opportunity of occupying a position secure from surprise, and of keeping the fleet continually up to its highest striking energy. Finally, assuming the geographical conditions give reasonable promise of contact, a quick decision, which modern war demands with ever greater insistence, is more probable. In such a disposition of course contact can rarely be made certain. The enemy, whom the hypothesis of blockade assumes to be anxious to avoid action, will always have a chance of evasion, but this will always be so, even with the closest blockade now possible. We may even go further and claim for open blockade that in favourable conditions it may give the better chance of contact. For by adopting the principle of open blockade we shall have, in accordance with the theory of defence, the further advantages of being able the better to conceal our dispositions, and consequently to lay traps for our enemy, such as that which Nelson prepared for Villeneuve in the Gulf of Lyons in 1805.
The objection to such a course which appears to have the most weight with current opinion is the moral one, which is inseparable from all deliberate choices of the defensive. If the watching fleet remains in a home fortified base, it may be assumed that the usual moral degradation will set in. But the method does not entail the inglorious security of such a base. A sound position may well be found at a spot such as Admiral
Togo occupied while waiting for the Baltic fleet, and in that case there was no observable degradation of any kind. Nor is there much evidence that this objection weighed materially with the opponents of Howe's view. Their objection was of a purely physical kind. Open blockade left the enemy too much freedom to raid our trade routes. The watching system might be sufficient to keep an unwilling battle-fleet in port or to bring a more adventurous one to action, but it could not control raiding squadrons. This was certainly Barham's objection. "If," he wrote to Pitt in 1794, "the French should have any intention of sending their fleet to sea with this easterly wind, and Lord Howe continues at Torbay, our Mediterranean and Jamaica convoys are in a very critical situation. Both fleets must by this time be drawing near the Channel, and cannot enter it while the easterly wind holds." This danger must always be with us, especially in narrow waters such as the North Sea. In more open theatres the difficulty is not so obtrusive, for with sufficient sea room trade may take naturally or by direction a course which our watching dispositions will cover. Thus with Nelson in the case of Toulon, his normal positions on the Sardinian coast covered effectually the flow of our trade to the Levant and the Two Sicilies, which was all there was at the time.
The truth is, that in endeavouring to decide between open and close blockade we find ourselves confronted with those special difficulties which so sharply distinguish naval warfare from warfare on land. We cannot choose on purely naval considerations. In naval warfare, however great may be our desire to concentrate our effort on the enemy's main forces, the ulterior object will always obtrude itself. We must from the first do our best to control sea communications, and since those communications are usually common, we cannot refrain