Meanwhile we may note that at sea the use of economic pressure from the
commencement is justified for two reasons. The first is, as we have seen,
that it is an economy of means to use our defensive positions for attack
when attack does not vitiate those positions, and it will not vitiate them
if fleet cruisers operate with restraint. The second is, that interference
with the enemy's trade has two aspects. It is not only a means of exerting
the secondary economic pressure, it is also a primary means towards
overthrowing the enemy's power of resistance. Wars are not decided
exclusively by military and naval force. Finance is scarcely less
important. When other things are equal, it is the longer purse that wins.
It has even many times redressed an unfavourable balance of armed force and
given victory to the physically weaker Power. Anything, therefore, which we
are able to achieve towards crippling our enemy's finance is a direct step
to his overthrow, and the most effective means we can employ to this end
against a maritime State is to deny him the resources of seaborne trade.

It will be seen, therefore, that in naval warfare, however closely we may
concentrate our efforts on the destruction of our enemy's armed forces as
the direct means to his overthrow, it would be folly to stay our hands when
opportunities occur, as they will automatically, for undermining his
financial position on which the continued vigour of those armed forces so
largely depends. Thus the occupation of our enemy's sea communications and
the confiscatory operations it connotes are in a sense primary operations,
and not, as on land, secondary.

Such, then, are the abstract conclusions at which we arrive in our attempt
to analyse the idea of command of the sea and to give it precision as the
control of common communications. Their concrete value will appear when we
come to deal with the various forms which naval operations may take, such
as, "seeking out the enemy's fleet," blockade, attack and defence of trade,
and the safeguarding of combined expeditions. For the present it remains to
deal with the various kinds of sea command which flow from the
communication idea.

If the object of the command of the sea is to control communications, it is
obvious it may exist in various degrees. We may be able to control the
whole of the common communications as the result either of great initial
preponderance or of decisive victory. If we are not sufficientl