hall include troops, the conditions at the time must dictate.
Troops with their transports will much complicate and increase the
difficulties of the problem, and they may or may not be needed.
The critical results can be accomplished by naval operations only;
since nothing can be accomplished if the naval part of the expedition
fails to secure the command of the sea; and the troops cannot be
landed until it has been secured, unless the fact of securing it
can safely be relied on in advance. For these reasons, the troops
may be held back until the command of the sea has been secured,
and then sent out as an independent enterprise. This would seem the
more prudent procedure in most cases, since one successful night
attack on a group of transports by an active enemy might destroy
it altogether.

But whether a military expedition should accompany the fleet, or
follow a few hundred miles behind, or delay starting until command
of the sea has been achieved, it is obvious that the logistic
calculations and executive measures for sending a modern fleet to
a very distant place, and sustaining it there for an indefinite
period, must be of the highest order of difficulty. The difficulty
will be reduced in cases where there is a great probability of
being able to secure a base which would be able to receive large
numbers of deep-draft ships in protected waters, to repair ships
of all classes that might be wounded in battle, and to store and
supply great quantities of ammunition, food, and fuel.

No expedition of such magnitude has ever yet been made--though some
of the expeditions of ancient times, such as the naval expedition
of Persia against Greece, B. C. 480, and the despatch of the Spanish
Armada in more recent days, may have been as difficult, considering
the meagreness of the material and engineering resources of those
epochs.

But even if no military force accompanies the expedition, the enormous
quantities of fuel, supplies, ammunition, medical stores, etc., that
will be required, especially fuel; the world-wide interest that
will be centred on the expedition; the international importance
attaching to it; and the unspeakable necessity that the plans shall
underestimate no difficulty and overlook no factor, point with a
long and steady finger at the necessity of attacking this problem
promptly and very seriously, and of detailing the officers and
constructing the administrative machinery needed to make the
calculations