What is the navy for? Of what parts should it be composed? What principles should be followed in designing, preparing, and operating it in order to get the maximum return for the money expended? To answer these questions clearly and without technical language is the object of the book. BRADLEY A. FISKE.   U. S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE, NEWPORT, R. I., September 3, 1916. STRATEGIC MAP OF THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC OCEANS *** Chapters III and VII were published originally in The U. S. Naval Institute ; ch

WAR AND THE NATIONS Because the question is widely discussed, whether peace throughout the world may be attained by the friendly co-operation of many nations, and because a nation's attitude toward this question may determine its future prosperity or ruin, it may be well to note what has been the trend of the nations hitherto, and whether any forces exist that may reasonably be expected to change that trend. We may then be able to induce from facts the law which that trend obeys, and make a reas

NAVAL A, B, C In order to realize what principles govern the use of navies, let us first consider what navies have to do and get history's data as to what navies in the past have done. It would obviously be impossible to recount here all the doings of navies. But neither is it necessary; for the reason that, throughout the long periods of time in which history records them, their activities have nearly always been the same. In all cases in which navies have been used for war there was the prelim

NAVAL POWER Mahan proved that sea power has exercised a determining influence on history. He proved that sea power has been necessary for commercial success in peace and military success in war. He proved that, while many wars have culminated with the victory of some army, the victory of some navy had been the previous essential. He proved that the immediate cause of success had often resulted inevitably from another cause, less apparent because more profound; that the operations of the navy had

NAVAL PREPAREDNESS In a preceding chapter I endeavored to show why it is that the necessities of the naval defense of a country have caused the gradual development of different types of vessels, each having its distinctive work. If those different types operated in separate localities they would lose that mutual support which it is the aim of organization to secure, and each separate group could be destroyed in turn by the combined groups of an enemy. For this reason, the types or groups are com

NAVAL DEFENSE There has never been a time since Cain slew Abel when men have not been compelled to devote a considerable part of their energies to self-defense. In the early ages, before large organizations existed or the mechanic arts had made much progress, defense was mostly defense of life itself. As time went on, and people amassed goods and chattels, and organized in groups and tribes, it came to include the defense of property—not only the property of individuals, but also of the tribe an

NAVAL POLICY Every country that has a satisfactory navy has acquired it as the result of a far-seeing naval policy, not of opportunism or of chance. The country has first studied the question thoroughly, then decided what it ought to do, then decided how to do it. Naval policy has to deal with three elements: material, personnel, and operations, which, though separate, are mutually dependent. A clear comprehension of their actual relations and relative weights can be obtained only by thorough st

GENERAL PRINCIPLES Strategy is difficult of definition; but though many definitions have been made, and though they do not agree together very well, yet all agree that strategy is concerned with the preparation of military forces for war and for operating them in war—while tactics is the immediate instrument for handling them in battle. Strategy thinks out a situation beforehand, and decides what preparations as to material, personnel, and operations should be made. Many books have been written

DESIGNING THE MACHINE The most important element connected with a navy is the strategy which directs it, in accordance with which all its plans are laid—plans for preparation before war and plans for operations during war. Strategy is to a navy what mind is to a man. It determines its character, its composition, its aims; and so far as external conditions will permit, the results which it accomplishes. It is possible for certain features connected with a navy to be good, even if the strategy dir

PREPARING THE ACTIVE FLEET John Clerk, of Eldin, Scotland, never went to sea, and yet he devised a scheme of naval tactics, by following which the British Admiral Rodney gained his victory over the French fleet between Dominica and Guadeloupe in April, 1782. Clerk devised his system by the simple plan of thinking intently about naval actions in the large, disregarding such details as guns, rigging, masts, and weather, and concentrating on the movements of the fleets themselves, and the doings of

RESERVES AND SHORE STATIONS In the preceding chapter it was pointed out that the work of preparing the naval machine for use could be divided into two parts: preparing the existing fleet and preparing the rest of the navy. The "rest of the navy" consists of the Navy Department itself, the naval stations, the reserve ships and men, and also the ships and men that must be brought in from civil life. As the department is the agency for preparing the naval stations, the reserves, and the men and shi

NAVAL BASES The nature of naval operations necessitates the expenditure of fuel, ammunition, and supplies; wear and tear of machinery; fatigue of personnel; and a gradual fouling of the bottoms of the ships. In case actual battles mark the operations, the expenditure of stored-up energy of all kinds is very great indeed, and includes not only damage done to personnel and material by the various agencies of destruction, but actual loss of vessels. To furnish the means of supplying and replenishin

OPERATING THE MACHINE The naval machine, including the various vessels of all kinds, the bases and the personnel, having been designed, put together, and prepared for its appointed task of conducting war, and the appointed task having at last been laid upon it, how shall the machine be operated—how shall it be made successfully to perform its task? In order to answer this correctly, we must first see clearly what is its task. War .—War may be said to be the act of two nations or two sets of nati