tion.

If the coming fleet is more powerful than the defending fleet, and
has a more numerous and powerful scouting force, it will, therefore,
be able to push back the defending fleet, whether an actual battle
occurs or not; and it will be able to bring over, also, a large
invading force in transports if its fighting superiority be great
enough. Furthermore, if we have not fortified and protected the
places which the enemy would wish to seize and use as advanced naval
bases, the enemy will be able to seize them, and will doubtless
do so.

Of course, this is so obvious as to seem hardly worth declaring;
and yet some people hesitate even to admit it, and thereby they
assume a passive condition of moral cowardice; for they know that
a strong force has always overcome a weaker force that opposed
it in war; and that it always will do so, until force ceases to
be force. They know that force is that which moves, or tends to
move, matter; and that the greater the force, the more surely it
will move matter, or anything that opposes it.

If, however, we establish naval bases near our valuable commercial
and strategic ports, both on our coast and in the Caribbean, and if
we fortify them so that an enemy could not take them quickly, the
condition of the enemy fleet will be much less happy; because it
will have to remain out on the ocean, where fuelling and repairing
are very difficult, and where it will be exposed, day and night,
especially at night, to attack by destroyers and submarines; and
in case necessity demands the occasional division of the force,
it must beware of attacks on the separated portions of the fleet.
The condition of a large fleet under way on an enemy's coast is one
requiring much patience and endurance, and one in which the number
of vessels is liable to be continuously reduced by the guerilla
warfare of the defenders.

In the case of our attempting offensive operations against the
distant coast of an enemy, we would be in the same position as a
foreign enemy would be in when attacking our coast, in that our
chances of success would be excellent if our fleet were considerably
superior to the defending fleet in fighting power, and in the number
and strength of scouts, and if the enemy coast possessed numerous
undefended bays and islands which we could seize as bases. But even
if the superiority of our fleet in fighting power and scouts was
considerably greater than the enemy's our ultimate success would