an and Japanese fleets--and the treaty
of peace was signed soon after. Usually, however, neither party to
the quarrel has had all its forces on the field in any one battle,
and neither force in the battle has been annihilated. Usually,
only partial forces have been engaged, and only partial victories
have been won; with the result that wars between contending nations
have usually consisted of a series of battles, with intervals of
rest between.

If two opposing forces in any battle were exactly equal in fighting
power, neither side in any battle would gain a victory, the two
sides would inflict identical amounts of damage on each other, and
the two sides would end the battle still equal in force. At rare
intervals, such conditions have been approximated; but usually one
side has had more fighting power than the other, and has inflicted
more damage of various kinds than it has received, with the result
that it attained an advantage more or less important over the other,
and with the further result that the original disproportion between
the two forces was increased. The increase may not necessarily
have been due to a greater number of killed and wounded or even
to a greater loss of material, such as guns or ships; there may
have been no increase in inequality in either of these ways, for
the increase in inequality may have consisted in the fact that
the weaker force was driven to a position less advantageous to it
for conducting operations in the future. But whatever the nature
of the advantage gained by the stronger side, the result has been
that the weaker side has come out of the battle relatively weaker
than it was before.

For this reason, it is highly desirable to each side to win each
battle. This does not mean that the loss of any one battle by either
party to a war means that the party losing that battle will necessarily
lose the war; for many battles may be fought by such small portions
of the whole nations' forces, or be lost by such small margins that
the loss of one battle, or even several battles, may be retrieved;
in fact, in few wars have the victories been all on one side. It
does mean, however, that each lost battle is a backward step; and
that for this reason the effort must be that no battle shall be
lost.

_Strategy and Tactics_.--Now, to win battles, two things combine,
strategy and tactics. The strategy of each side tries to arrange
matters so that the forces on its side shall enter each battl