"strategic concentration." But even that
term scarcely meets the case, for the succeeding process of gathering up
the army into a position for tactical deployment is also a strategical
concentration. Some further specialisation is required. The analytical
difference between the two processes is that the first is an operation of
major strategy and the other of minor, and if they are to be fully
expressed, we have to weight ourselves with the terms "major and minor
strategic concentration."

Such cumbrous terminology is too forbidding to use. It serves only to mark
that the middle stage differs logically from the third as much as it does
from the first. In practice it comes to this. If we are going to use
concentration in its natural sense, we must regard it as something that
comes after complete mobilisation and stops short of the formation of mass.

In naval warfare at least this distinction between concentration and mass
is essential to clear appreciation. It leads us to conclusions that are of
the first importance. For instance, when once the mass is formed,
concealment and flexibility are at an end. The further, therefore, from the
formation of the ultimate mass we can stop the process of concentration the
better designed it will be. The less we are committed to any particular
mass, and the less we indicate what and where our mass is to be, the more
formidable our concentration. To concentration, therefore, the idea of
division is as essential as the idea of connection. It is this view of the
process which, at least for naval warfare, a weighty critical authority has
most strongly emphasised. "Such," he says, "is concentration reasonably
understood--not huddled together like a drove of sheep, but distributed
with a regard to a common purpose, and linked together by the effectual
energy of a single will."[12] Vessels in a state of concentration he
compares to a fan that opens and shuts. In this view concentration connotes
not a homogeneous body, but a compound organism controlled from a common
centre, and elastic enough to permit it to cover a wide field without
sacrificing the mutual support of its parts.

[12] Mahan, _War of 1812_, i, 316.

If, then, we exclude the meaning of mere assembling and the meaning of the
mass, we have left a signification which expresses coherent disposal about
a strategical centre, and this it will be seen gives for naval warfare just
the working definition that we want as the counter