Home Bases_.--A home base is, as its name implies, a base situated
in the home country. The most usual type of the home naval base is
the navy-yard, though few navy-yards can meet all the requirements
of a naval base. The New York navy-yard, for instance, which is our
most important yard, lacks three of the most vital attributes of
a naval base, in that it has no means for receiving and protecting
a large fleet, it cannot be approached by large ships except at
high tide, and it could not receive a seriously injured battleship
at any time, because the channel leading to it is too shallow.

Home bases that approach perfection were evidenced after the battle
off the Skagerak; for the wounded ships of both sides took refuge
after the battle in protected bases, where they were repaired and
refitted, and resupplied with fighting men and fuel. These bases
seem to have been so located, so protected, and so equipped, as
to do exactly what bases are desired to do; they were "bases of
operations" in the best sense. The fleets of the opposing sides
started from those bases as nearly ready as human means and foresight
could devise, returned to them for refreshment after the operations
had been concluded, and, during the operations, were based upon those
bases. If the bases of either fleet had been improperly located,
or inadequately protected or equipped, that fleet would not have
been so completely ready for battle as, in fact, it was; and it
could not have gone to its base for shelter and repairs so quickly
and so surely as, in fact, it did. Many illustrations can be found
in history of the necessity for naval bases; but the illustration
given by this battle of May 31 is of itself so perfect and convincing,
that it seems hardly necessary or even desirable to bring forward
any others.

The fact of the nearness to each other of the bases of the two
contending fleets--the nearness of Germany and Great Britain in
other words--coupled with the nearness of the battle itself to
the bases, and the fact that both fleets retired shortly afterward
to the bases, bring out in clear relief the efficacy of bases; but
nevertheless their efficacy would have been even more strongly
shown if the battle had been near to the bases of the more powerful
fleet, but far from the bases of the other fleet--as was the case
at the battle, near Tsushima, in the Japan Sea.

Of course the weaker fleet in the North Sea battle would not have
been drawn into ba