state, but the pressure
of qualifying and only indirectly belligerent considerations,
that would prevent its being attempted.

In a struggle between two antagonists of the first rank, the
circumstances would be different. Purely belligerent considerations
would have fuller play. Mistakes will be made, of course, for
war is full of mistakes; but it may be accepted that an attack
on any position, however defended, is in itself proof that the
assailant believed the result hoped for to be quite worth the
cost of obtaining it. Consequently, in a struggle as assumed,
every mode of defence would have to stand on its intrinsic merits,
nearly or quite unaided by the influence of considerations more
or less foreign to it. Every scrap of local defence would, in
proportion to its amount, be a diminution of the offensive defence.
Advocates of the former may be challenged to produce from naval
history any instance of local naval defence succeeding against the
assaults of an actively aggressive navy. In the late war between
Japan and Russia the Russian local defence failed completely.

In the last case, a class of vessel like that which had failed
in local defence was used successfully, because offensively,
by the Japanese. This and many another instance show that the
right way to use the kind of craft so often allocated to local
defence is to use them offensively. It is only thus that their
adoption by a great maritime power like the British Empire can
be justified. The origin and centre of our naval strength are
to be looked for in the United Kingdom. The shores of the latter
are near the shores of other great maritime powers. Its ports,
especially those at which its fleets are equipped and would be
likely to assemble on the imminence of war, are within reach of
more than one foreign place from which small swift craft to be used
offensively might be expected to issue. The method of frustrating
the efforts of these craft giving most promise of success is to
attack them as soon as possible after they issue from their own
port. To the acceptance of this principle we owe the origin of the
destroyer, devised to destroy hostile torpedo-boats before they
could reach a position from which they would be able to discharge
with effect their special weapon against our assembled ships.
It is true that the destroyer has been gradually converted into
a larger torpedo-boat. It is also true that when used as such
in local defence, as at Port Art