d forced the Russians to exhaust themselves
in offensive operations which were beyond their strength. Nor was it only
ashore that this advantage was gained. The success of the system, which
culminated in the fall of Port Arthur, went further still. Not only did it
make Japan relatively superior at sea, but it enabled her to assume a naval
defensive and so to force the final naval decision on Russia with every
advantage of time, place, and strength in her own favour.

By the battle of Tsushima the territorial object was completely isolated by
sea, and the position of Japan in Korea was rendered as impregnable as that
of Wellington at Torres Vedras. All that remained was to proceed to the
third stage and demonstrate to Russia that the acceptance of the situation
that had been set up was more to her advantage than the further attempt to
break it down. This the final advance to Mukden accomplished, and Japan
obtained her end very far short of having overthrown her enemy. The
offensive power of Russia had never been so strong, while that of Japan was
almost if not quite exhausted.

Approached in this way, the Far Eastern struggle is seen to develop on the
same lines as all our great maritime wars of the past, which continental
strategists have so persistently excluded from their field of study. It
presents the normal three phases--the initial offensive movement to seize
the territorial object, the secondary phase, which forces an attenuated
offensive on the enemy, and the final stage of pressure, in which there is
a return to the offensive "according," as Jomini puts it, "to circumstances
and your relative force in order to obtain the cession desired."

It must not of course be asked that these phases shall be always clearly
defined. Strategical analysis can never give exact results. It aims only at
approximations, at groupings which will serve to guide but will always
leave much to the judgment. The three phases in the Russo-Japanese War,
though unusually well defined, continually overlapped. It must be so; for
in war the effect of an operation is never confined to the limits of its
immediate or primary intention. Thus the occupation of Korea had the
secondary defensive effect of covering the home country, while the initial
blow which Admiral Togo delivered at Port Arthur to cover the primary
offensive movement proved, by the demoralisation it caused in the Russian
fleet, to be a distinct step in the secondary phase of isol