uch a guide we
are sure to go astray amidst the bewildering multiplicity of tracks and
obstacles that meet us at every step. If for continental strategy its value
has been proved abundantly, then for maritime strategy, where the
conditions are far more complex, the need of it is even greater.

By maritime strategy we mean the principles which govern a war in which the
sea is a substantial factor. Naval strategy is but that part of it which
determines the movements of the fleet when maritime strategy has determined
what part the fleet must play in relation to the action of the land forces;
for it scarcely needs saying that it is almost impossible that a war can be
decided by naval action alone. Unaided, naval pressure can only work by a
process of exhaustion. Its effects must always be slow, and so galling both
to our own commercial community and to neutrals, that the tendency is
always to accept terms of peace that are far from conclusive. For a firm
decision a quicker and more drastic form of pressure is required. Since men
live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at
war have always been decided--except in the rarest cases--either by what
your army can do against your enemy's territory and national life or else
by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do.

The paramount concern, then, of maritime strategy is to determine the
mutual relations of your army and navy in a plan of war. When this is done,
and not till then, naval strategy can begin to work out the manner in which
the fleet can best discharge the function assigned to it.

The problem of such co-ordination is one that is susceptible of widely
varying solutions. It may be that the command of the sea is of so urgent an
importance that the army will have to devote itself to assisting the fleet
in its special task before it can act directly against the enemy's
territory and land forces; on the other hand, it may be that the immediate
duty of the fleet will be to forward military action ashore before it is
free to devote itself whole-heartedly to the destruction of the enemy's
fleets. The crude maxims as to primary objects which seem to have served
well enough in continental warfare have never worked so clearly where the
sea enters seriously into a war. In such cases it will not suffice to say
the primary object of the army is to destroy the enemy's army, or that of
the fleet to destroy the enemy's fleet. The del