, and
it culminates in what is known as strategic deployment. Finally, it is used
for the ultimate stage when the army so deployed is closed up upon a
definite line of operations in immediate readiness for tactical
deployment--gathered up, that is, to deal a concentrated blow.

Well as this terminology appears to serve on land, where the processes tend
to overlap, something more exact is required if we try to extend it to the
sea. Such extension magnifies the error at every step, and clear thinking
becomes difficult. Even if we set aside the first meaning, that is, the
final stage of mobilisation, we have still to deal with the two others
which, in a great measure, are mutually contradictory. The essential
distinction of strategic deployment, which contemplates dispersal with a
view to a choice of combinations, is flexibility and free movement. The
characteristic of an army massed for a blow is rigidity and restricted
mobility. In the one sense of concentration we contemplate a disposal of
force which will conceal our intention from the enemy and will permit us to
adapt our movements to the plan of operations he develops. In the other,
strategic concealment is at an end. We have made our choice, and are
committed to a definite operation. Clearly, then, if we would apply the
principles of land concentration to naval warfare it is desirable to settle
which of the two phases of an operation we mean by the term.

Which meaning, then, is most closely connected with the ordinary use of the
word? The dictionaries define concentration as "the state of being brought
to a common point or centre," and this coincides very exactly with the
stage of a war plan which intervenes between the completion of mobilisation
and the final massing or deployment for battle. It is an incomplete and
continuing act. Its ultimate consequence is the mass. It is a method of
securing mass at the right time and place. As we have seen, the essence of
the state of strategic deployment to which it leads is flexibility. In war
the choice of time and place will always be influenced by the enemy's
dispositions and movements, or by our desire to deal him an unexpected
blow. The merit of concentration, then, in this sense, is its power of
permitting us to form our mass in time at one of the greatest number of
different points where mass may be required.

It is for this stage that the more recent text-books incline to specialise
concentration--qualifying it as