he should offer to the King. In other
words, the war plans could be only plans and, like all plans for
future action, could be only tentative, and capable of being modified
by events as they should come to pass. They were only plans of
preparation, not plans of operation.

Yet there were plans of preparation for operations; plans prepared in
accordance with the principles of strategy, and based on information
as to the enemy's resources, skill, point of view, and probable
intentions. They formed the general guide for future operations.

Since 1870, the invention and practical development of the wireless
telegraph, and especially its development for use over very great
distances, has modified the relations of commanders on the spot
to home headquarters, and especially of naval commanders to their
navy departments. The wireless telegraph, under circumstances in
which it operates successfully, annihilates distance so far as
communication is concerned, though it does not annihilate distance
so far as transportation is concerned. It improves the sending and
receiving of news and instructions, both for the commander at sea
and for his department at home; but it does it more effectively
for the department than for the man at sea, because of the superior
facilities for large and numerous apparatus that shore stations
have, and their greater freedom from interruptions of all kinds.

This condition tends to place the strategical handling of all the
naval machine, including the active fleet itself, more in the hands
of the department or admiralty, and less in the hands of the
commander-in-chief: and this tendency is confirmed by the superior
means for discussion and reflection, and for trial by war games,
that exist in admiralties, compared with those that exist in ships.

The general result is to limit the commander-in-chief more and
more in strategical matters: to confine his work more and more to
tactics.

Such a condition seems reasonable in many ways. The government
decides on a policy, and tells the Navy Department to carry it
out, employing the executive offices and bureaus to that end, under
the guidance of strategy. Strategy devotes itself during peace to
designing and preparing the naval machine, and in war to operating
it, utilizing both in war and peace the bureaus and offices and
the fleet itself. And in the same way as that in which the bureaus
and offices perform the calculations and executive functions of
lo