ave a navy at least equal to hers; because we do not
know whether we should have to meet that navy near our coast, or
near hers, or far away from both. For the reason, furthermore, that
a war with a European Power might occur at a period of strained
relations with some Asiatic Power, we must realize the temptation
to that Asiatic Power to seize the opportunity and attack us on
the Pacific side, knowing that we should need all our navy on the
Atlantic side. This seems to mean that in order to have an effective
naval defense (since we are precluded by our policy from having
European allies and no South American country could give us any
effective naval help) we must have on each ocean a fleet as strong
as that of any nation on that ocean against whose wishes we may
have to enforce a policy--or against whose policy we may have to
oppose resistance.

The essential requirement of any defense is that it shall be adequate;
because an inadequate defense will be broken down, while the attack
will retain a large proportion of its original strength. In the
_United States Naval Institute_, in 1905, the present writer showed,
by means of a series of tables, how, when two forces fight, the
force which is originally the more powerful will become gradually
more powerful, relatively to the weaker, as the fight goes on. That,
for instance, if two forces start with the relative powers of 10 and
8, the weaker force will be reduced so much more rapidly than the
stronger that when it has been reduced to zero the stronger force
will have a value of 5.69. The values mentioned indicated the actual
fighting strength--strength made up of all the factors--material,
physical, and psychic--that constituted it. Of course, none of
these factors can ever be accurately compared; but nevertheless
the tables seemed to prove that in a contest between two forces
whose total strengths are as 10 and 8 one force will be reduced
to zero, while the other will be reduced not quite one-half.

One of the lessons drawn was "the folly of ineffectual resistance."
Doubtless a clearer lesson would have been "the folly of ineffectual
preparedness"; because, when the decision as to resistance or
non-resistance is forced upon a nation, the matter is so urgent,
the military, political, and international conditions so complex,
and the excitement probably so intense, that a wise decision is
very difficult to reach; whereas the question of what constitutes
effectual prepare