Russia then sent out another fleet. The Japanese met this fleet on
the 27th of May, 1904, near the Island of Tsushima, between Corea
and Japan. The battle was decided in about an hour. The Japanese
sank practically all the Russian ships before the battle was entirely
finished, with comparatively small loss to Japan. This battle was
carried on 12,000 miles by sea route from Saint Petersburg. No
invasion of Russia or Japan was contemplated, or attempted, and
yet the naval battle decided the issue of the war completely, and
was followed by a treaty of peace very shortly afterward.

These wars show us, as do all wars in which navies have engaged,
that the function of a navy is not only to defend the coast in
the sense of preventing an enemy from landing on it, but also to
exert force far distant from the coast. The study of war has taught
its students for many centuries that a merely passive defense will
finally be broken down, and that the most effective defense is
the "offensive-defensive."

Perhaps the clearest case of a correct offensive-defensive is Nelson's
defense of England, which he carried on in the Mediterranean, in
the West Indies, and wherever the enemy fleet might be, finally
defeating Napoleon's plan for invading England--not by waiting off
the coast of England, but by attacking and crippling Napoleon's
fleet off the Spanish coast near Trafalgar.

The idea held by many people that the defense of a country can
be effected by simply preventing the invasion of its coasts, is a
little like the notion of uneducated people that a disease can be
cured by suppressing its symptoms. For even a successful defense
of a coast against invasion by a hostile force cannot remove the
inimical influence to a country's commerce and welfare which that
hostile force exerts, any more than palliatives can cure dyspepsia.
Every intelligent physician knows that the only way to cure a disease
is to remove its cause; and every intelligent military or naval man
knows that history teaches that the only way in which a country
can defend itself successfully against an enemy is to defeat the
armed force of that enemy--be it a force of soldiers on the land, or
a force of war-ships on the sea. In naval parlance, "our objective
is the enemy's fleet."

If the duty of a navy be merely to prevent the actual invasion
of its country's coasts, a great mistake has been made by Great
Britain, France, and other countries in spending so much money