as the mind and brain and nerves and the material
elements of a man must be designed and made to work in harmony
together, so surely must all the parts of any ship, and all the
parts of any navy, parts of material and parts of personnel, be
designed and made to work in harmony together; obedient to the
controlling mind, and sympathetically indoctrinated with the wish
and the will to do as that mind desires.

CHAPTER IX

PREPARING THE ACTIVE FLEET

John Clerk, of Eldin, Scotland, never went to sea, and yet he devised
a scheme of naval tactics, by following which the British Admiral
Rodney gained his victory over the French fleet between Dominica
and Guadeloupe in April, 1782. Clerk devised his system by the
simple plan of thinking intently about naval actions in the large,
disregarding such details as guns, rigging, masts, and weather, and
concentrating on the movements of the fleets themselves, and the
doings of the units of which those fleets were made. He assisted
his mental processes by little models of ships, which he carried in
his pockets, and which he could, and did, arrange on any convenient
table, when he desired to study a problem, or to make a convert.

He was enabled by this simple and inexpensive device to see the
special problems of fleet tactics more clearly than he could have
done by observing battles on board of any ships; for his attention
in the ships would have been distracted by the exciting events
occurring, by the noise and danger, and by the impossibility of
seeing the whole because of the nearness of some of the parts.
The amazing result was that he formed a clearer concept of naval
tactics than any admiral of his time, finally overcame the natural
prejudice of the British navy, and actually induced Rodney to stake
on the suggestion of a non-military civilian his own reputation
and the issue of a great sea fight. Furthermore, the issue was
crowned with success.

Nothing could be simpler than Clerk's method. It was, of course,
applied to tactics, but similar methods are now applied to strategy;
for strategy and tactics, as already pointed out, are based on
similar principles, and differ mainly in the fact that strategy
is larger, covers more space, occupies more time, and involves
a greater number of quantities.

Most of the books on naval strategy go into the subject historically,
and analyze naval campaigns, and also describe those measures of
foresight whereby nations, notably