mpel us to handle the
maxim of "Seeking out the enemy's fleet" with caution.

The difficulty obtruded itself from the moment the idea was born. It may be
traced back--so far at least as modern warfare is concerned--to Sir Francis
Drake's famous appreciation in the year of the Armada. This memorable
despatch was written when an acute difference of opinion had arisen as to
whether it were better to hold our fleet back in home waters or to send it
forward to the coast of Spain. The enemy's objective was very uncertain. We
could not tell whether the blow was to fall in the Channel or Ireland or
Scotland, and the situation was complicated by a Spanish army of invasion
ready to cross from the Flemish coast, and the possibility of combined
action by the Guises from France. Drake was for solving the problem by
taking station off the Armada's port of departure, and fully aware of the
risk such a move entailed, he fortified his purely strategical reasons with
moral considerations of the highest moment. But the Government was
unconvinced, not as is usually assumed out of sheer pusillanimity and lack
of strategical insight, but because the chances of Drake's missing contact
were too great if the Armada should sail before our own fleet could get
into position.

Our third elementary principle is the idea of concentration of effort, and
the third characteristic of naval warfare which clashes with it is that
over and above the duty of winning battles, fleets are charged with the
duty of protecting commerce. In land warfare, at least since laying waste
an undefended part of your enemy's country ceased to be a recognised
strategical operation, there is no corresponding deflection of purely
military operations. It is idle for purists to tell us that the deflection
of commerce protection should not be permitted to turn us from our main
purpose. We have to do with the hard facts of war, and experience tells us
that for economic reasons alone, apart from the pressure of public opinion,
no one has ever found it possible to ignore the deflection entirely. So
vital indeed is financial vigour in war, that more often than not the
maintenance of the flow of trade has been felt as a paramount
consideration. Even in the best days of our Dutch wars, when the whole plan
was based on ignoring the enemy's commerce as an objective, we found
ourselves at times forced to protect our own trade with seriously
disturbing results.

Nor is it more profitable