in
the open outside the same limits, keeping in touch with its advanced
cruisers and flotillas by means of wireless telegraphy, and thereby
dispensing with anything like a fixed rendezvous. It is not, perhaps,
imperative that it should always cruise entirely outside the prescribed
radius, because experience in modern naval manoeuvres has frequently
shown that it is a very difficult thing for torpedo craft, moving at
random, to discover a fleet which is constantly shifting its position at
high speed, especially when they are at any moment liable to attack from
cruisers and torpedo craft of the other side.

Thus a modern blockade will, so far as battle fleets are concerned, be
of necessity rather a watching blockade than a masking or sealing up
blockade. If the two belligerents are unequal in naval strength it will
probably take some such form as the following. The weaker belligerent
will at the outset keep his battle fleet in his fortified ports. The
stronger may do the same, but he will be under no such paramount
inducement to do so. Both sides will, however, send out their torpedo
craft and supporting cruisers with intent to do as much harm as they can
to the armed forces of the enemy. If one belligerent can get his
torpedo craft to sea before the enemy is ready, he will, if he is the
stronger of the two, forthwith attempt to establish as close and
sustained a watch of the ports sheltering the enemy's armed forces as
may be practicable; if he is the weaker, he will attempt sporadic
attacks on the ports of his adversary and on such of his warships as may
be found in the open. If the enemy is so incautious as to have placed
any of his capital ships or other important craft in a position open to
the assault of torpedo craft--as Russia did at Port Arthur at the
opening of the war with Japan--or if he has been so lacking in vigilance
and forethought as not to have taken timely and adequate measures for
meeting sporadic attacks of the kind indicated, such attacks may be very
effective and may even go so far to redress the balance of naval
strength as to encourage the originally weaker belligerent to seek a
decision in the open. But the forces of the stronger belligerent must be
very badly handled and disposed for anything of the kind to take place.
The advantage of superior force is a tremendous one. If it is associated
with energy, determination, initiative, and skill of disposition no more
than equal to those of the assail