st be remembered that the man is,
and always will be, greater than the machine.

As to handling the navy, first of all the War Staff and the commander
in chief must solve the strategic problem correctly. The fate of
the Spanish Armada in the 16th Century and that of the Russian
navy at the beginning of the 20th are eloquent of the effect of
bad strategy on a powerful fleet. Secondly, the commander in chief
must be possessed of the right fighting doctrine--the spirit of the
offensive. In all ages the naval commander who sought to achieve
his purpose by avoiding battle went to disaster. The true objective
must be, now as always, _the destruction of the enemy's fleet_.

Such are the material and the spiritual essentials of sea power.
The phrase has become so popular that a superior fleet has been
widely accepted as a talisman in war. The idea is that a nation
with sea power must win. But with all the tremendous "influence of
sea power on history," the student must not be misled into thinking
that sea power is invincible. The Athenian navy went to ruin under
the catapults of Syracuse whose navy was insignificant. Carthage, the
sea power, succumbed to a land power, Rome. In modern times France,
with a navy second to England's, fell in ruin before Prussia, which
had practically no navy at all. And in the World War it required
the entry of a new ally, the United States, to save the Entente
from defeat at the hands of land power, despite an overwhelming
superiority on the sea.

The significance of sea power is _communications_. Just so far
as sea control affects lines of communications vital to either
belligerent, so far does it affect the war. To a sea empire like
the British, sea control is essential as a measure of defense.
If an enemy controls the sea the empire will fall apart like a
house of cards, and the British Isles will be speedily starved
into submission. It is another thing, however, to make the navy
a sword as well as a shield. Whenever the British navy could cut
the communications of the enemy, as in the case of the wars with
Spain and Holland, it was terribly effective. When it fought a
nation like Russia in the Crimean War, it hardly touched the sources
of Russian supplies, because these came by the interior land
communications. So also the French navy in 1870 could not touch
a single important line of German communications and its effect
therefore was negligible. If in 1914 Russia, for example, had been
n