s, and the extent
to which they are the main preoccupation of Naval operations.

MARITIME COMMUNICATIONS

The various kinds of Maritime Communications for or against which a fleet
may have to operate are:--

(1) Its own communications, or those of its adversary (which correspond
to the communications of armies operating ashore). These tend to
increase in importance strategically with the increasing hunger of
modern fleets (for coal, ammunition, &c).

(2) The communications of an army operating from an advanced oversea
base, that is communication between the advanced and the main base.

(3) Trade Routes, that is the communications upon which depend the
national resources and the supply of the main bases, as well as the
"lateral" or connecting communications between various parts of
belligerents' possessions.

N.B.--Such "lines of passage and communication" are the preoccupation of
Naval Strategy; that is to say, problems of Naval Strategy can be reduced
to terms of "passage and communication" and this is probably the best
method of solving them.

NAVAL STRATEGY CONSIDERED AS A
QUESTION OF PASSAGE AND
COMMUNICATION

By "Naval Strategy" we mean the art of conducting the operations of the
Fleet. Such operations must always have for their object "passage and
communication"; that is, the Fleet is mainly occupied in guarding our own
communications and seizing those of the enemy.

PROOF I.--_Deductive_.--We say the aim of Naval Strategy is to get command
of the sea. What does this mean? It is something quite different from the
Military idea of occupying territory, for the sea cannot be the subject of
political dominion or ownership. We cannot subsist upon it (like an army on
conquered territory), nor can we exclude neutrals from it. Admiral Colomb's
theory of "conquest of water territory," therefore, involves a false
analogy, and is not safe as the basis of a strategical system. What then is
the value of the sea in the political system of the world? Its value is as
a means of communication between States and parts of States. Therefore the
"command of the sea" means the control of communications in which the
belligerents are adversely concerned.

COROLLARY.--The command of the sea can never be, like the conquest of
territory, the ulterior object of a war, unless it be a purely maritime
war, as were approximately our wars with the Dutch in the 17th century,
but