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friendly ships may be met with. Moreover, a torpedo attack should be a deliberate attack.

This, then, is the rationale of torpedo attack and defence, as formulated by one of the highest authorities on the subject in our own naval service. Captain Bacon, however, is only an individual, it may be objected, and the official theory may be different. The official theory is identical. In the Naval Annual for 1903 it is related how, during manœuvres in the Mediterranean, the Implacable was attacked by a destroyer of her own side, and the official narrative of the operations is cited as remarking, "it is most unlikely that this would have happened in war, for the destroyer, which was in sight long before she attacked, would have been fired on without waiting to ascertain whether she was friend or foe." It is clear, then, that Captain Bacon's views cannot be denied the authority of official sanction. It may thus be taken for granted that in war all torpedo craft will be fired on at sight unless they have previously disclosed their identity. It follows that if a friendly torpedo craft is not to be spared, except on terms with which a neutral cannot comply, a neutral torpedo craft will fare still worse. A neutral torpedo craft, however, has clearly no business to be there at all. If she sights a belligerent fleet, the best thing she can do is to show it a clean pair of heels at once. Nothing on earth can save her if she once allows herself to be caught within the range of belligerent fire. In the abstract, of course, she has just as much right to use the sea as any other vessel that floats. In like manner a husbandman has every right to till his fields, if he chooses, under the fire of two contending armies. But if he is killed it is his own fault.

So far, then, there is no great difficulty. The neutral torpedo craft must take her chance. She has no business to be there intentionally, and if she is there by accident, she must do her best not to be there as soon as possible. But the neutral trading vessel, whether fishing boat or

larger craft, stands on quite a different footing. In the clash of war she is innocent, defenceless, and helpless, and yet experience shows that she runs a very appreciable risk of being mistaken for a torpedo craft, and, as such, of being fired on at sight. How is this to be prevented? If Dogger Bank incidents were likely to become common, the situation would be rendered intolerable to a neutral Power possessing a large mercantile marine and a navy adequate to its protection. It must be made clear to the belligerent that he cannot make with impunity such disastrous mistakes as Admiral Rozhdestvensky made at the Dogger Bank, that it is safer for him to run the risk of a not very probable torpedo attack than by making a mistake to incur the much more probable and much more serious risk of having the fleets of a powerful neutral added to the fleets of an adversary with whom he is already at war. In other words, the commander of a belligerent fleet or ship must show the real quality of his " valeur militaire." He must not allow his military judgment to be sophisticated by a psychological atmosphere mainly of his own creation. The right of firing on a torpedo craft at sight carries with it the correlative duty of not mistaking an innocent vessel for a torpedo craft. Such a mistake may occasionally be made in circumstances which go far to excuse it; but such circumstances must needs be very rare, and were not to be found, in the judgment of the Commission, in the situation at the Dogger Bank. "A torpedo attack," says Captain Bacon," should be a deliberate attack." The defence against such an attack must be equally circumspect. The psychological atmosphere must be distrusted, the state of expectancy must be controlled. The sea is the common highway of peaceful commerce and industry. The belligerent commander must never forget this, nor allow himself to open fire on whatever looks like a torpedo craft on a dark night without waiting to ascertain whether what he is attacking is a furtive and insidious assailant or only a flock of defenceless and unoffending sheep, such as Quixote

LESSON OF THE INCIDENT

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mistook for the troops of "the infidel, Alifanfaron of Taprobana." If he acts in this heedless fashion, he discredits his own "valeur militaire," and runs the risk of turning neutrals, wholly against their will, into his country's enemies. These are lessons which it behoves all maritime Powers to learn. It was because Admiral Rozhdestvensky had not learnt them that innocent lives were sacrificed on the Dogger Bank, and the world was brought within a hair's breadth of almost universal war.

THE STRATEGY OF POSITION

WAR," said Napoleon, " is an affair of positions."

This is especially true of naval war. It is the principle which governs the conflict of fleets, and it determines their distribution. The essence of all naval warfare will be found to consist in the effort of each belligerent to interrupt the maritime communications of the other and to secure his own. When either belligerent has succeeded in establishing a complete and unassailable control over the maritime communications of his adversary, and has thereby obtained complete security for his own, the object of naval warfare is attained. There is nothing more for the victorious fleet to do except to hold what it has won ; and that is comparatively easy, because the situation supposed implies that the enemy no longer possesses any naval force which is capable of challenging its hold. The history of naval warfare is an almost unbroken succession of illustrations of this broad principle, and there is no illustration of it more impressive, more instructive, nor more conclusive than the great naval campaign which ended at Trafalgar. Trafalgar was the closing scene of the long maritime struggle between England and Napoleon. It put an end once for all to Napoleon's plans for the invasion of England, and it opened the way for the great counter-stroke against him in the Peninsula which ended at last in his overthrow.

It is only another way of stating the same broad principle, to say that naval warfare is essentially a struggle for the command of the sea. Command of the sea means 1 The United Service Magazine, October 1905.

COMMAND OF THE SEA

271 the control, absolute and unassailable, of the enemy's maritime communications, and it means nothing else. Meaning that, it means everything that naval warfare, as such, can attain. In the case of an island, it means that such an island cannot be invaded, starved out, or otherwise injured from the sea so long as its sea defence is unimpaired. In the case of two Powers not possessing a common frontier, it means that neither can assail the other without first making its communications across the sea secure. The Crimea, for example, could never have been invaded if the Russian fleet had been able to "impeach" the fleets of England and France upon the seas. Had the naval resources of Russia been sufficient to enable her to try conclusions with England and France upon the seas, the armies of England and France could not have been landed in the Crimea until the naval issue had been decided, nor could they even have been transported to Varna.

Now England, being an island, can only be assailed from the sea. The British Empire, being an assemblage of far-flung possessions, acknowledging a common sovereignty and separated from the seat of that sovereignty and from each other by vast stretches of ocean distance, can only be held together by secure maritime communications. The United Kingdom, being an industrial and mercantile community, sending the products of its industry across the seas to all parts of the world, and receiving payment for them in food and other imported commodities, is the centre of a vascular system which is essential to its wholesome nourishment and even to its very existence. It has been calculated, I think, that the interchange of commodities between these islands and the parts across the seas is carried on without ceasing, day and night, from year-end to year-end, at the rate of some two tons per minute. The loss of the command of the sea by England, or, to speak more accurately, the failure to secure it in the event of war, would mean the suspension of this interchange with all its incal