f the ship complete),
the best combination of gun power, armor protection, and speed is
attainable in the largest ship. In other words, the larger the
ship, the more power it can carry in proportion to its size, and
the more quickly that power can be placed where it can do the most
good.

_Strategic Operations_.--These may be divided into two classes,
offensive and defensive. The two classes are distinct; and yet there
is no sharp dividing-line between them any more than there is between
two contiguous colors in the spectrum. Defensive operations of the
kind described by a popular interpretation of the word "defense" would
be operations limited to warding off or escaping the enemy's attack,
and would be just as efficacious as the passive warding off of the
blows of fists. Such a defense can never succeed, for the reason
that the recipient is reduced progressively in power of resistance
as the attacks follow each other, while the attacker remains in
unimpaired vigor, except for the gently depressing influence of
fatigue. Reference to Table I will render this point clear, if we
make the progressive reductions of the power of one contestant,
and no reductions of the power of the other contestant.

Defensive operations, therefore, include "hitting back"; that is,
a certain measure of offensive operations, intended to weaken the
ability of the enemy to do damage. In fact, no operations are more
aggressively offensive, or more productive of damage to the enemy's
personnel and material, than operations that are carried on in order
to defend something. No animal is so aggressively belligerent as
a female "defending" her young.

Offensive and defensive operations are nevertheless quite different,
especially in two particulars, one being the use of the initiative
or attack, and the other the distance to the home. In offensive
operations, the attack is made; in defensive operations, the attack
is resisted; and even if the resistance takes an aggressive character,
and drives the original attacker back to the place he started from, yet
the side which has made the original attack has carried on offensive
operations, and the other side defensive. Offensive operations are,
as a rule, carried on farther from home than defensive operations. If
_A_ is carrying on offensive operations against _B_, _A_ is usually
farther away from his home than _B_ is from his home. We see from
this that the offensive has the advantage of the initiative