both in force and in precision of
manoeuvre. In the battleship great speed also is distinctly secondary
to offensive power and to coal endurance.

To return from a long digression. Either Cuba or Puerto Rico might, in
an ordinary case of war, have been selected as the first objective of
the United States operations, with very good reasons for either
choice. What the British island Santa Lucia is to Jamaica, what
Martinique would be to France, engaged in important hostilities in the
Caribbean, that, in measure, Puerto Rico is to Cuba, and was to Spain.
To this was due the general and justifiable professional expectation
that Cervera's squadron would first make for that point, although the
anchorage at San Juan, the principal port, leaves very much to be
desired in the point of military security for a fleet,--a fact that
will call for close and intelligent attention on the part of the
professional advisers of the Navy Department. But, while either of the
Spanish islands was thus eligible, it would have been quite out of the
question to attempt both at the same time, our navy being only equal
to the nominal force of Spain; nor, it should be added, could a
decided superiority over the latter have justified operations against
both, unless our numbers had sufficed to overbear the whole of the
hostile war fleet at both points. To have the greater force and then
to divide it, so that the enemy can attack either or both fractions
with decisively superior numbers, is the acme of military stupidity;
nor is it the less stupid because in practice it has been frequently
done. In it has often consisted the vaunted operation of "surrounding
an enemy," "bringing him between two fires," and so forth; pompous and
troublesome combinations by which a divided force, that could
perfectly well move as a whole, starts from two or three widely
separated points to converge upon a concentrated enemy, permitting him
meanwhile the opportunity, if alert enough, to strike the divisions in
detail.

Having this obvious consideration in mind, it is curious now to recall
that in the "North American Review," so lately as February, 1897,
appeared an article entitled, "Can the United States afford to fight
Spain?" by "A Foreign Naval Officer,"--evidently, from internal
indications, a Spaniard,--in which occurred this brilliant statement:
"For the purposes of an attack upon Spain in the West Indies, the
American fleet would necessarily divide itself into tw