part of strategic
deployment on land. The object of a naval concentration like that of
strategic deployment will be to cover the widest possible area, and to
preserve at the same time elastic cohesion, so as to secure rapid
condensations of any two or more of the parts of the organism, and in any
part of the area to be covered, at the will of the controlling mind; and
above all, a sure and rapid condensation of the whole at the strategical
centre.

Concentration of this nature, moreover, will be the expression of a war
plan which, while solidly based on an ultimate central mass, still
preserves the faculty of delivering or meeting minor attacks in any
direction. It will permit us to exercise control of the sea while we await
and work for the opportunity of a decision which shall permanently secure
control, and it will permit this without prejudicing our ability of
bringing the utmost force to bear when the moment for the decision arrives.
Concentration, in fact, implies a continual conflict between cohesion and
reach, and for practical purposes it is the right adjustment of those two
tensions--ever shifting in force--which constitutes the greater part of
practical strategy.

In naval warfare this concentration stage has a peculiar significance in
the development of a campaign, and at sea it is more clearly detached than
ashore. Owing to the vast size of modern armies, and the restricted nature
of their lines of movement, no less than their lower intrinsic mobility as
compared with fleets, the processes of assembly, concentration, and forming
the battle mass tend to grade into one another without any demarcation of
practical value. An army frequently reaches the stage of strategic
deployment direct from the mobilisation bases of its units, and on famous
occasions its only real concentration has taken place on the battlefield.
In Continental warfare, then, there is less difficulty in using the term to
cover all three processes. Their tendency is always to overlap. But at sea,
where communications are free and unrestricted by obstacles, and where
mobility is high, they are susceptible of sharper differentiation. The
normal course is for a fleet to assemble at a naval port; thence by a
distinct movement it proceeds to the strategical centre and reaches out in
divisions as required. The concentration about that centre may be very far
from a mass, and the final formation of the mass will bear no resemblance
to either of the