sailors and good patriots.

What are called the principles of war, though they can be simply stated,
are not easy to learn, and can never be learned from books alone. They
are the principles of human nature; and who ever learned from books how
to deal successfully with his fellows? War, which drives human nature to
its last resources, is a great engine of education, teaching no lessons
which it does not illustrate, and enforcing all its lessons by bitter
penalties. One of the notorious principles of war, familiar to all who
have read books about war, is that a merely defensive attitude is a
losing attitude. This truth is as true of games and boxing, or of
traffic and bargaining, as it is of war. Every successful huckster is
thoroughly versed in the doctrine of the initiative, which he knows by
instinct and experience, not by the reading of learned treatises. A man
who knows what he wants and means to get it is at a great advantage in
traffic with another man who is thinking only of self-defence. Every
successful boxer is an expert in military science; he tries either to
weaken his adversary by repeated assaults on the vital organs, or to
knock him out by a stunning blow. He does not call these operations by
the learned names of strategy and tactics, but he knows all about them.
The most that a book can do, for trader or boxer or soldier, is to
quicken perception and prepare the mind for the teaching of experience.

The experience of the war from beginning to end taught the old lesson of
the supreme value of the offensive. The lesson was quickly learned and
put to the proof by our forces on the western front. The Royal Naval Air
Service, from the first, sought every opportunity for offensive action.
Raids over enemy centres, for the reasons which have been given, were
impossible to carry out except in the best of weather. Offensive action
in collaboration with ships of war was impeded by the imperfect
structure of the seaplanes and the imperfect arrangements for conveying
them to the scene of action. Meantime the public, impressed by the
dangers to be feared from the Zeppelin, called chiefly for defence. It
has never been easy to instruct even the members of the other services
concerning the right use of aircraft in war. When once they were
reconciled to our aeroplanes they liked to see them in the air above
them, which is the place of all places where our aeroplanes are least
useful. It is greatly to the credit of thos