e to its fate, in which case
it is certain to fall in the long run. In point of fact the occupation
of distant bases by any naval Power is merely the giving of hostages to
any and every other Power which in the day of conflict can establish its
command of the sea. That is the plain philosophy of the whole question.

It only remains to consider very briefly the question of the supply of
fleets operating in distant waters. In a very interesting and suggestive
paper on the "Supply and Communications of a Fleet," Admiral Sir Cyprian
Bridge has pointed out that "in time of peace as well as in time of war
there is a continuous consumption of the articles of various kinds used
on board ship, viz., naval stores, ordnance stores, engineers' stores,
victualling stores, coal, water, etc." Of these the consumption of
victualling stores is alone constant, being determined by the number of
men to be victualled from day to day. The consumption of nearly all the
other stores will vary greatly according as the ship is more or less at
sea, and it is safe to say that for a given number of ships the
consumption will be much greater in time of war, especially in coal,
engineers' stores, and ordnance stores, than it is in time of peace. But
in peace conditions Admiral Bridge estimated that for a fleet consisting
of four battleships, four large cruisers, four second-class cruisers,
thirteen smaller vessels of various kinds, and three torpedo craft,
together with their auxiliaries, the _minimum_ requirements for six
months--assuming that the ships started with full supplies, and that
they returned to their principal base at the end of the period--would be
about 6750 tons of stores and ammunition, and 46,000 tons of coal,
without including fresh water. The requirements of water would not be
less than 30,000 tons in the six months, and of this the ships could
distil about half without greatly increasing their coal consumption; the
remainder, some 15,000 or 16,000 tons, would have to be brought to them.
In time of war the requirements of coal would probably be nearly three
times as great as in time of peace, and the requirements of
ammunition--estimated in time of peace at 1140 tons--might easily be ten
times as great. Thus in addition to the foregoing figures we have 16,000
tons of water, and in war time a further _minimum_ addition of some
90,000 tons of coal and 10,260 tons of ammunition, making in all a round
total of 170,000 tons for a fleet