iciency of the
navy. Not speed, but power of offensive action, is the dominant factor
in war. The decisive preponderant element of great land forces has
ever been the infantry, which, it is needless to say, is also the
slowest. The homely summary of the art of war, "To get there first
with the most men," has with strange perverseness been so distorted
in naval--and still more in popular--conception, that the second and
more important consideration has been subordinated to the former and
less essential. Force does not exist for mobility, but mobility for
force. It is of no use to get there first unless, when the enemy in
turn arrives, you have also the most men,--the greater force. This is
especially true of the sea, because there inferiority of force--of gun
power--cannot be compensated, as on land it at times may be, by
judiciously using accidents of the ground. I do not propose to fall
into an absurdity of my own by questioning the usefulness of higher
speed, _provided_ the increase is not purchased at the expense of
strictly offensive power; but the time has come to say plainly that
its value is being exaggerated; that it is in the battleship secondary
to gun power; that a battle fleet can never attain, nor maintain, the
highest rate of any ship in it, except of that one which at the moment
is the slowest, for it is a commonplace of naval action that fleet
speed is that of the slowest ship; that not exaggerated speed, but
uniform speed--sustained speed--is the requisite of the battle fleet;
that it is not machinery, as is often affirmed, but brains and guns,
that win battles and control the sea. The true speed of war is not
headlong precipitancy, but the unremitting energy which wastes no
time.

For the reasons that have been given, the safest, though not the most
effective, disposition of an inferior "fleet in being" is to lock it
up in an impregnable port or ports, imposing upon the enemy the
intense and continuous strain of watchfulness against escape. This it
was that Torrington, the author of the phrase, proposed for the time
to do. Thus it was that Napoleon, to some extent before Trafalgar, but
afterward with set and exclusive purpose, used the French Navy, which
he was continually augmenting, and yet never, to the end of his reign,
permitted again to undertake any serious expedition. The mere
maintenance of several formidable detachments, in apparent readiness,
from the Scheldt round to Toulon, presented to t