navy, strong in the discipline,
skill, and courage of a numerous _personnel_ habituated to the
sea, in the number and quality of its ships, in the excellence
of its _materiel_, and in the efficiency, scale, security, and
geographical position of its arsenals and bases. History has
demonstrated that sea-power thus conditioned can gain any purely
maritime object, can protect the trade and the communications of a
widely extended empire, and whilst so doing can ward off from its
shores a formidable invader. There are, however, limitations to be
noted. Left to itself its operation is confined to the water, or at
any rate to the inner edge of a narrow zone of coast. It prepares
the way for the advance of an army, the work of which it is not
intended, and is unable to perform. Behind it, in the territory
of which it guards the shores, there must be a land-force adjusted
in organisation, equipment, and numbers to the circumstances
of the country. The possession of a navy does not permit a
sea-surrounded state to dispense with all fixed defences or
fortification; but it does render it unnecessary and indeed absurd
that they should be abundant or gigantic. The danger which always
impends over the sea-power of any country is that, after being
long unused, it may lose touch of the sea. The revolution in
the constructive arts during the last half-century, which has
also been a period of but little-interrupted naval peace, and
the universal adoption of mechanical appliances, both for
ship-propulsion and for many minor services--mere _materiel_
being thereby raised in the general estimation far above really
more important matters--makes the danger mentioned more menacing
in the present age than it has ever been before.

II

THE COMMAND OF THE SEA[50]

[Footnote 50: Written in 1899. (_Encyclopoedia_Britannica_.)]

This phrase, a technical term of naval warfare, indicates a definite
strategical condition. The term has been substituted occasionally,
but less frequently of late years, for the much older 'Dominion
of the sea' or 'Sovereignty of the sea,' a legal term expressing
a claim, if not a right. It has also been sometimes treated as
though it were identical with the rhetorical expression 'Empire
of the sea.' Mahan, instead of it, uses the term 'Control of
the sea,' which has the merit of precision, and is not likely
to be misunderstood or mixed up with a form of words meaning
something different. The expression 'Comman