permanent and general command of the sea is the
condition of ultimate success. The only way of securing such a command by
naval means is to obtain a decision by battle against the enemy's fleet.
Sooner or later it must be done, and the sooner the better. That was the
old British creed. It is still our creed, and needs no labouring. No one
will dispute it, no one will care even to discuss it, and we pass with
confidence to the conclusion that the first business of our fleet is to
seek out the enemy's fleet and destroy it.

No maxim can so well embody the British spirit of making war upon the sea,
and nothing must be permitted to breathe on that spirit. To examine its
claim to be the logical conclusion of our theory of war will even be held
dangerous, yet nothing is so dangerous in the study of war as to permit
maxims to become a substitute for judgment. Let us examine its credentials,
and as a first step put it to the test of the two most modern instances.

Both of them, it must be noted, were instances of Limited War, the most
usual form of our own activities, and indeed the only one to which our war
organisation, with its essential preponderance of the naval element, has
ever been really adapted. The first instance is the Spanish-American War,
and the second that between Russia and Japan.

In the former case the Americans took up arms in order to liberate Cuba
from Spanish domination--a strictly limited object. There is no evidence
that the nature of the war was ever clearly formulated by either side, but
in just conformity with the general political conditions the American war
plan aimed at opening with a movement to secure the territorial object. At
the earliest possible moment they intended to establish themselves in the
west of Cuba in support of the Colonial insurgents. Everything depended on
the initiative being seized with decision and rapidity. Its moral and
physical importance justified the utmost risk, and such was the
conformation of the sea which the American army had to pass, that a
strictly defensive or covering attitude with their fleet could reduce the
risk almost to security. Yet so unwisely dominated were the Americans by
recently rediscovered maxims, that when on the eve of executing the vital
movement they heard a Spanish squadron was crossing the Atlantic, their own
covering force was diverted from its defensive position and sent away to
"seek out the enemy's fleet and destroy it."

Puerto Rico