r force, which constitute a state of peace. If
they have a common frontier this circumstance indicates what is, as a
general rule, the best and most efficient way of securing the object to
be attained. The armed forces of both belligerents lie at the outset
within their respective frontiers. If those of either can be constrained
by the superior strategy of the other to keep within their own
territory, the initial advantage lies with the belligerent who has so
constrained them, and the war has in common parlance been carried into
the enemy's country. In other words, the invasion of the enemy's
territory has begun, and pressure has been brought to bear on his will
which, if maintained without intermission and with an intensity duly
proportioned to its growing extent, must in the end subdue it. To this
there is no alternative. To invade the enemy's territory at all is to
inflict a reverse on his armed forces, which would assuredly have
prevented the invasion if they could. The territory in the rear of the
invading army is in greater or less degree brought under the control of
the invader and thereby temporarily lost to the invaded State. If this
process is continued the authority and the resources of the invaded
State are progressively diminished, until at last when the capital is
occupied and the remainder of the invaded country lies open to the
advance of the invader, the defeated State must sue for peace on such
terms as the invader may concede, because it has nothing left to fight
for, and no force wherewithal to fight. This is of course merely an
abstract and generalized description of the course of a war on land, but
I need not consider its concrete details nor analyse any of the
conditions which may, and in the concrete often do, impede or deflect
its course, because my sole purpose is to show how armed force operates
in the abstract to subdue the will of the belligerent who is worsted in
the conflict. It operates by the destruction of his armed forces, by the
occupation of his territory, and by the consequent extinction of his
authority and appropriation of his resources. He can only recover the
latter and liberate his territory by submitting to such terms as the
invader may dictate or concede.

Naval warfare aims at the same primary object, namely, the destruction
of the enemy's armed forces afloat; but it cannot by itself produce the
same decisive effect, because there is no territory which naval force,
as such,