ould
be regarded as so engaging by any other nation whose rights and
interests were in any way affected by the act. Hence the difference
between the two is plain. The claim to the sovereignty of the seas and
the exaction of the ceremonial observance--the lowering of a flag or a
sail--which symbolized it, was not in itself an act of war, though it
might lead to war if the claim were resisted. An attempt to assert or
secure the command of the sea is, on the other hand, in itself an act of
war and would never be made by any nation not prepared to take the
consequence in the instant outbreak of hostilities.

For what is it that a nation seeks to do when it attempts to exercise or
secure the command of the sea? It seeks to do nothing more and nothing
less than to deny freedom of access to the waters in dispute to the
ships, whether warships or merchant ships, of some other nation. It
denies the common right of highway, which is the essential attribute of
the sea, to that other nation, and seeks to secure the monopoly of that
right for itself. In other words, it seeks to drive its adversary's
warships from the sea, and either by the capture of his merchant vessels
to appropriate the wealth they contain or by destroying them to deprive
the adversary of its enjoyment. This is all that naval warfare as such
can do. If the enemy is not constrained by the destruction of his
warships and the extinction of his maritime commerce to submit to his
victorious adversary's will, other agencies, not exclusively naval in
character, must be employed to bring about that consummation. This means
that military force must be brought into operation, either for the
invasion of the defeated adversary's territory or for the occupation of
some of his possessions lying across the seas, if he has any. If he has
none, or if such as he has are not worth taking or holding--either as a
permanent possession or as what is called a material guarantee to be
used in the subsequent negotiations for peace--then the only alternative
is invasion. But that is a subject which demands a chapter to itself.

It rarely happens, however, that a great naval Power is devoid of
transmarine possessions altogether, or that such as it holds are
esteemed by it to be of so little value or importance that their
seizure by an enemy would leave matters _in statu quo_. Sea power is, as
a rule, the outcome of a flourishing maritime commerce. Maritime
commerce as it expands, tends, ev