certain exceptional cases, be defensible and even expedient, yet their
multiplication, beyond such exceptional cases of proved and acknowledged
expediency, is very greatly to be deprecated. The old rule
applies--_Entia non sunt praeter necessitatem multiplicanda._

* * * * *

My task is now finished--I will not say completed, for the subject of
naval warfare is far too vast to be exhausted within the narrow compass
of a Manual. I should hardly exaggerate if I said that nearly every
paragraph I have written might be expanded into a chapter, and every
chapter into a volume, and that even so the subject would not be
exhausted. All I have endeavoured to do is to expound briefly and in
simple language the nature of naval warfare, its inherent limitations as
an agency for subduing an enemy's will, the fundamental principles which
underlie its methods, and the concrete problems which the application of
those methods presents. Tactical questions I have not touched at all;
strategic questions only incidentally, and so far as they were
implicated in the discussion of methods. Political issues and questions
of international policy I have eschewed as far as might be, and so far
as it was necessary to deal with them I have endeavoured to do so in
broad and abstract terms. Of the many shortcomings in my handling of the
subject no one can be more conscious than I am myself. Yet I must
anticipate one criticism which is not unlikely to be made, and that is
that I have repeated and insisted on certain phrases and ideas such as
"command of the sea," "control of maritime communications," "the fleet
in being," "blockade," and the like, until they might almost be
regarded as an obsession. Rightly or wrongly that has, at any rate, been
done of deliberate intent. The phrases in question are in all men's
mouths. The ideas they stand for are constantly misunderstood,
misinterpreted, and misapplied. I hold that, rightly understood, they
embody the whole philosophy of naval warfare. I have therefore lost no
opportunity of insisting on them, knowing full well that it is only by
frequent iteration that sound ideas can be implanted in minds not
attuned to their reception.

INDEX

Aircraft, 121

Alabama, the, 109

Alexander, his conquest of Darius, 48

Allemand, his escape from Rochefort, 66, 67

Amiens, Peace of, 73

_Animus pugnandi_, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 58, 59, 61, 78

Antony, Mark, 72

Armada,