ere it
not for the constant recurrence of such phrases as: "If England were to
lose command of the sea, it would be all over with her." The fallacy of the
idea is that it ignores the power of the strategical defensive. It assumes
that if in the face of some extraordinary hostile coalition or through some
extraordinary mischance we found ourselves without sufficient strength to
keep the command, we should therefore be too weak to prevent the enemy
getting it--a negation of the whole theory of war, which at least requires
further support than it ever receives.

And not only is this assumption a negation of theory; it is a negation both
of practical experience and of the expressed opinion of our greatest
masters. We ourselves have used the defensive at sea with success, as under
William the Third and in the War of American Independence, while in our
long wars with France she habitually used it in such a way that sometimes
for years, though we had a substantial preponderance, we could not get
command, and for years were unable to carry out our war plan without
serious interruption from her fleet.

So far from the defensive being a negligible factor at sea, or even the
mere pestilent heresy it is generally represented, it is of course inherent
in all war, and, as we have seen, the paramount questions of strategy both
at sea and on land turn on the relative possibilities of offensive and
defensive, and upon the relative proportions in which each should enter
into our plan of war. At sea the most powerful and aggressively-minded
belligerent can no more avoid his alternating periods of defence, which
result from inevitable arrests of offensive action, than they can be
avoided on land. The defensive, then, has to be considered; but before we
are in a position to do so with profit, we have to proceed with our
analysis of the phrase, "Command of the Sea," and ascertain exactly what it
is we mean by it in war.

In the first place, "Command of the Sea" is not identical in its
strategical conditions with the conquest of territory. You cannot argue
from the one to the other, as has been too commonly done. Such phrases as
the "Conquest of water territory" and "Making the enemy's coast our
frontier" had their use and meaning in the mouths of those who framed them,
but they are really little but rhetorical expressions founded on false
analogy, and false analogy is not a secure basis for a theory of war.

The analogy is false for two r