1914, and we hear the same day that
a fleet of battleships, battle cruisers, destroyers, submarines,
aircraft, and auxiliaries has left the enemy's country, followed
by a fleet of transports carrying troops--there will be immediate
need for strategy of the most skilful kind; and this need will
continue until either the United States or her enemy has been made
to acknowledge herself beaten, and to sue for peace.

As such a war will be mainly naval, and as naval wars are characterized
by great concentration of force, by each side getting practically
all its naval force into the contest, by each side staking its
all on the issue of perhaps a single battle (as the Russians and
Japanese did at Tsushima) one fleet or the other will be practically
annihilated, and its country will be exposed naked to the enemy.

The first effort on hearing of the departure of the hostile fleet
will be, of course, to get our fleet out to sea, reinforced as much
as practicable, by our reserve ships; and to get the coast-guard
on their patrol stations. As we should not know the destination
of the enemy, we should either have to assume a destination and
send our fleet to that place (leaving the other places undefended)
or else send our fleet out to sea to some position from which it
would despatch scouts in different directions to intercept the
enemy, in order that our fleet might meet it and prevent its farther
advance.

Of course, the latter procedure could not be carried out reasonably,
unless we had a great enough number of trained scouts to make the
interception of the enemy fleet probable; because otherwise the
probabilities would be that an enemy having the battle cruisers
and scouts that European navies have, would succeed in evading
our fleet and landing a force upon our shores; and it could not
be carried out reasonably either, if we knew that our fleet was
markedly inferior to the coming fleet; because to send out our
fleet to meet a much more powerful one in actual battle would be
to commit national suicide by the most expeditious method.

In case the departure of the enemy fleet occurred in the stormy
months of the winter, we might feel warranted in guessing that its
immediate destination was the Caribbean; yet if our fleet were in
the Caribbean at the time, and if our coast lacked shore defenses as
at present, we might argue that the enemy would take the opportunity
to make a direct descent upon our coast, seize a base--say on