Heresies of Sea Power/Part 3/Chapter 1

Much is written and spoken about the eternal principles and grand truths of warfare. The general idea has been crystallised into an apt phrase that 'though tactics alter, the great principles of strategy remain the same.'

This is very generally accepted as an axiom. Undoubtedly it embodies a truth; but is it all the truth? Are the eternal principles no more and no less than those we generally have in mind? What indeed have we in mind? And what is the dividing line if any between strategy and tactics?

For convenience, rather than that any such line can be drawn, we are apt to define the two to ourselves by characterising as strategical moves everything that takes place before the hostile squadrons sight each other, as tactical operations all that they do when within sighting-distance.

It is, of course, merely a convenient convention: else the addition of top-gallant masts to our ships and the fitting of crows' nests thereto would suddenly make strategy into tactics! An academical definition ​matters not; though the two merge even as day and night merge, though there is a time when it is neither day nor night, yet all have a clear conception as to what day means and what night means, and do not get confused by the sunset gun which officially separates the two.

Apply this to strategy and tactics: is the generality 'the principles of strategy (translated by most into "strategy" pure and simple) alter not,' a statement that any gain by accepting too fully? At any rate before doing so it is well to try to discover what those eternal principles are.

Strategy has been defined by someone with a taste for neat definitions as 'The art of overwhelming a portion of the enemy with a superior force'—which is excellent, save for the difficulty of defining the 'superior force.'

Can we define it as superior numbers, saying 'Only numbers can annihilate'? At Actium Antony had numbers both in individual units and in the superior power of each unit. Whatever his tactics may have been, his strategy in bringing his forces to the essential point was excellent enough. His portion was complete defeat. There were reasons for it, of course, but this—and a dozen other instances that anyone can recall—indicate that 'two to one' is not of itself enough to ensure victory.

Is it to be defined as superior skill coupled with superior numbers? The Carthaginians under Hannibal ​the admiral had both in their first big sea fight with the Romans, and they sustained total defeat. Defeat was the direct result of the Roman corvi perhaps, the flying bridges over which the hordes of unexpected soldiers, men of fierce courage and discipline, poured on to the relatively unprotected decks. A new invention, which the Carthaginians were powerless to anticipate, powerless to train against, rendered worthless all their skill, naval efficiency and sea aptitude. Yet as they sighted the Roman fleet they had every logical reason to expect an easy victory and the wisest and cleverest among them could have foretold no other result.

Of course the Roman fleet, thanks to its corvi, was infinitely the superior in power, and what really happened was that Carthaginian strategy sent a totally inadequate force to meet the enemy. By no possible means, however, could they understand this before-hand. The truth that the stronger and in every way superior would defeat the inferior remained eternal: but all that they could have regarded as eternal in the way of principles proved an unstable Will-o'-the-wisp.

Suppose Captain Mahan to have lived in that age and that he had employed himself in writing criticisms of the operations, full of all knowledge of what history has had to teach since so far as strategical operations are concerned, could he have written otherwise than to suggest that the move of the Romans would be as the move of Rogestvensky in A.D. 1905? By all the canons ​of naval art as then known the Carthaginians were not merely two to one but ten to one.

That 'two will beat one, other things being equal' will ever remain an 'eternal principle'; but where the sea is concerned can any man ever say with certainty what makes 'two,' or 'other things equal'? If not, what workable eternal principle is left to us? That the x superior will beat the x inferior—x being the unknown quantity. The superior if he be superior will beat the inferior; but he cannot be sure of his superiority till the battle is lost and won.

In tactics as in strategy the same thing obtains—we cannot eliminate x any more than we can exactly define it.

All men will concede that the existence of an eternal principle would be extremely useful; indeed, many are so convinced of this that they stretch points to create eternal principles, for their own convenience and the comfort of feeling that there is some sure rock upon which they can plant their feet in the quagmire of uncertainty suggested by a contemplation of future naval warfare. To do so is, of course, very dangerous; to rely upon a rock that is no rock all, but merely a stone lying in the swamp, is a sure prelude to disaster. It were better to lay down as an eternal principle that all is luck and blind chance; but here, too, we may also be little less wrong, since there has never been a war the results of which can be so attributed.

Why was Athens beaten in the Peloponnesian war? ​Why Carthage? Why Antony? Why the Spanish Armada? Why France in the Trafalgar campaign? Why Russia in her naval conflict with Japan? In these and a hundred other wars we can definitely say that there was no blind chance in the matter. Reading the history of any of these wars we can find many a reason why, but every possible strategical or tactical reason that we can think of applies to some and not to others. To be wise after the event is easy: but could we, given the conditions known to either side, have forecasted accurately any result where the combatants were fairly equal on paper by means of any eternal principle of strategy or tactics?

If we collect all the facts of all the wars and spend years in tabulating them the utmost we are likely to produce will be a paradox. We shall find the startling underlying fact that in the majority of cases when there has been the nearest apparent approach to equality the results have usually been far more decisive, far more annihilating to the vanquished than when a considerable obvious disparity has existed!

Russia and Japan, by all calculations that could be made beforehand on paper, were comparatively equal,—considerably more so than America and Spain a few years before or England and France in the Great War. Yet Russia was hopelessly beaten at sea. Why?

The relatively equal Peloponnesians and Athenians produced a far more annihilating result than did the ​(as it proved) greatly superior Romans over the Carthaginians. Why?

The answer is not so plain as is the glimmering suggestion of some eternal principle, that 'equality means the annihilation of one; disparity, the survival of both'—about as crude a paradox as can be conceived. Yet the answer is to be perceived on careful examination. When something of the nature of equality exists both sides are more confident, more eager to engage, more prepared to take chances. The Russians, for instance, were never convinced of their inferiority to the Japanese,^[1] as were the Spaniards against the Americans. Hence the Russians were ready to fight great fleet actions, while the Spaniards convinced of the hopelessness of things kept many ships at home and made peace before they lost them. Similarly in the Great War, convinced by Trafalgar of the hopelessness of the sea-struggle, France attempted no more grand battles and so, when the war ended, had many fine ships left to her. It was French Naval Power, not the French navy, that was annihilated at Trafalgar; the bulk of the French ships still existed at the close of the war, blockaded in their harbours by the over-whelmingly superior British fleet. The Carthaginians in their worst troubles always had ships left to them, their fleet was never annihilated like the fleets of Russia in 1904–5; while the Athenians, convinced of equality. ​to the last, had practically their entire fleet annihilated as well as their naval power.

On this it is possible to build a theory and make of it an eternal principle that 'only equality can annihilate'! It clashes with 'only numbers can annihilate' and clashes badly. But this last has obvious limitations when we come to think the matter out. If one side has too many numbers (assuming numbers here to mean superiority) the other will decline to risk annihilation in the material sense. He will, of course, experience it in the moral sense, for declining the combat is an acknowledgment of defeat, but—there is a good deal left with which to try again some other day or in another war. Ships always can be and always have been replaceable: the fatal thing in an annihilation has been the loss of trained men who can only be created in long time-spaces. It takes a very appreciable part of a lifetime to make a trained admiral or captain: raw material, however enthusiastic, cannot supply the deficiency. Russia, after the battle of the Sea of Japan could at once have laid down a considerable battle fleet, and raised men for the crews. But where were officers of experience to come from? The absence of these was the full sum of the annihilation of her navy.^[2]

Spain, on the other hand, had plenty of officers ​left, and the existence of these and a few ships probably counted for something to her advantage in the terms of peace. They represented some kind of menace—a weak one no doubt, but still something. It is probably better to be distinctly inferior than nearly equal—the loser's fleet is more valuable so.

There have, of course, been exceptions to the rule that equality rather than disparity means the annihilation of one without much loss to the other, but such exceptions are few. Peru, for instance, was very inferior to Chili and her fleet was annihilated, and Austria and Italy in the Lissa campaign though balanced fairly evenly did not end by one fleet only being left. But in all such cases some obvious reason is to be found. The first-mentioned campaign had so few units engaged that it is rather out of count; also before the ironclad Independeneia was wrecked Peru probably considered herself 'nearly equal' to Chili, in which case the war would illustrate the eternal principle rather than negative it. As for the Lissa campaign; this war ended too soon for the principle involved to have any real opportunity of demonstrating itself. Had the war continued, by all we now know of it, there is every reason to believe that it would have ended with the annihilation of practically all Italy's warships and the loss of few if any Austrian ones. To any other exceptions that can be brought forward some similar answer is always or nearly always to be adduced, and of course the situation is really a logical ​sequence. So long as bases are impregnable or nearly so, so long will the greatly inferior shelter there and survive: so long as something of an equality appears, so long will each side imagine that it possesses advantage enough to take the chances of victory. Then the fitter to win is certain to win—'x' will operate.

It may be noted that in all big battles (in which a real or fancied 'nearly equal' must have existed or else there had been no battle) one side has been practically annihilated and the other little hurt. In the battle of the Sea of Japan the Russians lost almost everything, the Japanese were practically unhurt. The Nile and Trafalgar were equally one-sided in result, so were Lepanto, Actium, Ægospotaini and any number of other naval fights. There have been indecisive conflicts like Yalu, Lissa and others; but in these neither side had much hurt the other and that determination to fight to a finish characteristic of the grand battle was absent. None of these were 'grand battles,' they were more of the nature of 'engagements'—skirmishes and a feeling of the other's strength on each side. In grand battles the eternal principle has always obtained and one side has always suffered entirely out of proportion to the other.

It is logical that this should have been. With fleets in contact strategy is at an end and tactics in operation. The bases which interfere with strategical operations are absent: the fight is in the open, there ​is no shelter. With forces of 10 to 9 engaged there is no deducting one from each till 1 is left one side and the other. The winner has always won by the eternal practical principle of two to one, the 'whole of his force on part of the enemy's'—tactics have always been the eternal and unchanging thing, simple and unobscured, and at Tsushima as at Trafalgar two (that is 'two' in every way) has annihilated one (that is in every way 'one' only) and continued to do so in ever-increasing superiority up to the end. If 9 fight 10 and the 9 (or the 10) are concentrated on 5 for a little while, the result is obvious.

But whether the eternal principle of the past that 'nearly equal' is an essential to annihilation of one side is an eternal principle of the future—and, therefore, an eternal principle at all—is another matter. Men now fight with two weapons—gun and torpedo; in the past they had virtually but one. In the early days of the gun, the ram co-existed with it but gun and ram were virtually very akin. It is easy enough to draw a parallel; to say the ram being of shorter range represented the torpedo, and the galleys which used to ram sailing ships torpedo-boats. Really the galley had little in common with the torpedo-boat—neither had the fire-ship which has also been likened to the torpedo-boat. It is easier to see the likeness than the difference, but the difference exists. It exists in the fact that the torpedo-boat does not have to make actual contact as the galley-ram and the fire-ship ​did. Torpedoes have been avoided—but rarely; whereas the history of the ram is the history of its being avoided. The fire-ship had not the mobility of the ship it attacked: the torpedo-boat and the torpedo have both a speed advantage. These differences are everything. Many learned articles have been written to prove that the torpedo menace is much exaggerated; but the writers have not had to face torpedo attack. The torpedo menace kept Ito from following the Chinese fleet after the Yalu; it drove Togo away at the battle of Round Island, it rendered Rogestvensky helpless at Tsushima. 'The sea was full of torpedo-boats. We might sink one, two or three, but of what avail with dozens more to come?' Thus wrote a Russian of that great battle. Of course the Russians lacked boats of their own with which to neutralise the Japanese boats, due perhaps to their having lent too ready an ear to those who preached that the torpedo menace was exaggerated, and the situation may have been to that degree unique. But still the torpedo menace exists. It colours all ideas of strategy, it is remembered in all tactical plans, so that academical discussions as to its exact actual value matter very little. There still remains the fact that to-day two weapons exist where practically only one existed before and that the navies of all nations recognise the existence of two weapons, and either hold or are cognisant of the belief that a battleship fleet may be annihilated by a lucky torpedo attack. How often in ​torpedo exercises have fleets been torpedoed or ever they sighted the boats. There is nothing to stop this happening in war sooner or later; and nothing can render an admiral impervious to such a possibility. A splendid strategical move may end in nothingness thereby; after a grand battle the torpedo may annihilate all that floats.

How does this affect the eternal principle—well established from history—that there must be virtual equality to render possible annihilation of a navy? It affects it largely. It means that this new factor of the torpedo of the small craft being potentially able to annihilate the big ship, necessitates a reserve of big ships and trained crews for them to an unprecedented extent. It was Japan's luck rather than aught else which saved her fleet from being torpedoed after Round Island—luck and strategies which the old days had no need for. Russia had her opportunities despite all Togo's precautions. She made little of these opportunities; but that is no criterion for what future belligerents may attempt. Consequently, though it was an eternal principle in the past that too great a preponderance of force was a disadvantage for the annihilation of the enemy's navy: it is a useless verity now. An immense preponderance is now essential to guard against new chances of loss or paralysis by the torpedo menace, also no fleet is absolutely safe against being sunk in error by its own torpedo craft—certainly an absolutely new condition.

​Wherefore it is now true that 'Only numbers can annihilate.'

Every reader, ere he has got so far as this will perceive that these and the remarks preceding them are altogether contradictory. Such a method of arguing round the circle has been purposely adopted, for it is the strongest proof of how unreliable any so-called eternal principle may be.

Of course the torpedo menace, once it is fully realised will be met. The constructional problem of the unsinkable big ship will be solved, and then the eternal principle of Equality of number to secure annihilation will reassert itself. Meanwhile however a transition stage has to be passed through.

Now it is manifestly absurd to regard as eternal a principle that is even to a small degree intermittent: we are far better without it. Wherefore we are left with no eternal principle at all save the one enunciated earlier in this chapter that the x superior will defeat the x inferior, x being the unknown quantity—a principle far too vague to be of service to anyone unless we can solve the mystery of x.

Cases have been cited in which it has not been sea habitude, tactical skill, general efficiency, courage or enthusiasm. It may be the sum of these, but it is not any particular one and rarely the same one.

*****

​The fact that radius has been sought by Sea Power in all ages has already been remarked upon briefly. To increase their radius the early Egyptians and Greeks supplemented the oar by the sail. At a later period the sail supplanted the oar, because it gave an increased radius, and, finally, steam did not replace the sail until the use of it conferred a radius at least sufficient for all practical needs. The early steamers were masted so that radius should in no way be reduced by the limitations of bunker capacity; the masted warship though a wretched sailer only died out when it became clear that by the establishment of coaling stations and increased bunker capacity there should be no loss of needful radius to counterbalance the gain which steam conferred in other directions. Here, then, appears a principle which, having controlled all the past, may confidently be expected to affect the future.

As regards the immediate future we have seen the law in imperfect operation in the adoption of water-tube boilers, all types of which increase effective radius by conferring the ability to raise steam quickly and, in most types, to maintain high powers over extended periods. These two facts made the abandonment of the old-type cylindrical boilers certain; and those who fought for the retention of cylindrical clearly ignored the trend of history throughout all time.

As things are, the universal adoption of the water-tube boiler must be said to rest chiefly on its advantages ​due to the increase of radius through quick steam raising and the consequent saving in ability to lie at a base consuming no coal.

In the war with Russia it was found that Japanese ships with cylindrical boilers consumed five times the coal burned by those with water-tube generators, owing to the fact that, having to be ready for sea at two hours' notice, they had to keep fires going while the Belleville boilered ships were able to let fires out.

At some time in the future steam is destined to be replaced by some other motive power, possibly some form of the internal combustion engine, but this can only come about by a further increase of radius or some great advance in speed which shall be equivalent to an extension of radius. Finally electricity is looked upon as the eventual motive power, and this will no doubt endure for a considerable while.

History, however, shows us that motive power when it was the oar, was profoundly affected and finally displaced by the necessity of adopting artillery. The relative merits of oar and sail were comparatively nicely balanced when artillery demanded the space occupied by the oars. Artillery also, from its ability to strike over a relatively great distance where previous weapons had had a very small radius of action made itself more important than motive power. Masts and sails, oars and rowers were alike at its mercy tactically, and the need of motive power declined. At Lepanto, for instance, the six great galleons which won the day ​for the Christians were relatively floating fortresses, their tactical radius instead of depending upon the speed with which their rams could crash into the enemy was governed by the range of their heavy artillery and the general impossibility of assailing it.^[3]

Now it is conceded by all that progress in weapons does not stand still; hence it is surely quite permissible to imagine that at some future date there may be evolved a weapon of extreme potency, as superior to the gun as the gun was to the catapult, and of which we can no more conceive than could the Athenians dream of the gun. It is also quite permissible to imagine that this weapon might require the space now occupied by motive power just as the gun did in the case of the oar. If so, and if its powers are so great both in destruction and in range (which might well be that of wireless telegraphy), motive power will become a secondary consideration. Thus were there a choice, as in the past, between the weapon and the motive power the latter would go, even if it meant that sails had to be reverted to. Such a return to sails is, of course, extremely unlikely, but it is an inference from the old struggle between the oar and the sail—which was a conflict between the radius of the weapon and ​the radius of the ship. The reasons that led to the adoption of steam were essentially those which made men cling to the oar as long as possible. Sail replaced the oar because it left room for the weapon: steam came into use because it did not interfere with the use of the weapon. It—or some similar motive power—can remain only so long as no weapon needs the space occupied by it.

It is also possible that this potential weapon will have so great a radius that motive power will become entirely superfluous. Suppose it—as is likely rather than otherwise—to partake of the nature of the vril of the Coming Race. Ships then might become entirely useless for its application, because the ship exists and has always existed only to enable men to reach opponents who were otherwise not to be reached. It has been shown that the radius of activity of warships has increased from a small portion of the world to the entire world, and every increase of speed, by demolishing distance, must now tend to reduce the area of operations. In the past speed increases were met by increasing the area; but the world's limits are now reached. The almost daily increase in the range of artillery is slowly contracting the area. Every increase of speed contracts it. In other words we have reached and passed that limit of geographical expansion which in the past met and neutralised the increase of radius in range of weapons and speed—which are convertible terms. For instance, the galleons at Lepanto already ​referred to. Or let us imagine a modern warship at the disposal of the ancient Greeks in any of their naval fights. Motive power would have been of relatively small importance to her because of the radius of her artillery—the former would have been cheerfully sacrificed for the latter had only one of the two been possible to possess. It is very important to realise this.

To resume: the geographical area expanded to meet certain conditions, therefore many or most strategical problems are, or till quite recently were, the same thing over and over again upon a larger scale. But now that the geographical expansion has ceased with the limits of the world, now that owing to increased speed and radius, it is daily contracting in its relation to belligerents and destined to go on being contracted, is it certain that the great principles of strategy remain eternal? Will they exist at all when the radius of the weapon shall in the distant future have been so increased that the radius of the ship has become of no account? Will there then be any scope for strategical genius, or scope for anything save the original brute courage to face death more readily or more often than will the enemy: the fighting requisite of the Homeric age—the integral factor of Fitness to Win?

It may be argued that so long as merchant ships plough the seas and war exists, there will be hostile vessels to attack those merchant ships and friendly ​ones to defend them—a condition necessitating strategies. But it does not follow. To-day a fort protects to a great extent anything within its range of vision. Both range of vision and range of the weapon may be indefinitely extended by some at present inconceivable means. Then what room for strategies of any kind? Or will there still be room for scientific combinations, for the annihilation of one wonderful weapon by the concentration on it of two others which are situated at two different points and so cannot be simultaneously destroyed? Or will radius have so increased that there is no room anywhere for two points sufficiently far apart?

Such speculations and questions may seem the idlest of idle dreams. But this is merely a superficial view. If we use the history of the past to aid us in the present and in preparing for the immediate future, it is not safe to accept a 'law' unless it is applicable to any reasonable conditions of evolution that we may conceive. Otherwise we may find ourselves in the same error as the Carthaginian admiral Hannibal when he found himself faced by the Roman corvi.

The Carthaginians must assuredly have been familiar with the history of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, and the collapse of Athenian Sea Power before the 'other ways' of the Syracusans. They were familiar with crash tactics as opposed to the more scientific ramming tactics—pecking tactics—that might be employed. They were familiar with ​the carrying of soldiers at sea for definite destructive purposes. The lessons of the past could teach them what dangers crash tactics might imply, and enable them to think out replies. It is probable that all this was considered. But they did not carry their researches into the future as well as the past.

Had they done so, they would not necessarily have divined the advent of the corvi. They might have to a certain extent, because the corvi, like everything else, were an evolution and part of a cycle reverting to past methods—they might have anticipated or they might not have. But the mental exercise of speculating as to whether at some future date their present methods would be equally efficacious, whether such principles as then obtained were eternal faced with imaginary but logical conditions of the future, would undoubtedly have rendered them fitter to meet the terrible surprise of the corvi when it came, and fitter to evolve an answer to it. Hence the wisdom of testing every eternal principle by the future as well as by the past.

By the corvi the Romans extended the striking radius of their soldiers at sea—they extended it from their own decks to the decks of the enemy.

It is an eternal principle founded on the past that progress is always on the lines of extended radius of ship or weapon. For geographical reasons it can no longer be counterbalanced strategically by extending the ship area; but we have seen it counterbalanced ​tactically by a great and steady increase of the weapon radius. The tactical area is expanding as the strategical one relatively contracts. It has gone from inches to feet, from feet to yards, from yards to miles. Today it averages three to four miles or more; but this seems nothing in the 12,000 mile half-circumference of the world, which is the maximum available limit. Yet as to-day's fighting range is 30,000 times the original maximum range and the present range can only be multiplied by less than 3,000 to reach absolute finality, it may be said that no weapon of the future can be more inconceivable to us than ours of to-day would have been to the earliest aquatic fighters.

The strategical area was once less than a hundred miles. It did not exceed a few hundreds for nearly two thousand years. Then it went up rapidly till it covered the world. Its contraction has been brought about by speed and endurance making different points relatively nearer than they were. The increase of tactical radius for which men seek eternally is producing this.

We may assume then that radius will go on increasing. Eventually—unless wars cease first—it must reach near its limit either some form of vessel with a speed which almost annihilates time for practical purpose or a weapon of practically unlimited range. Neither of these radii limits is appreciably near as yet, nor can we properly conceive of their being so. But the cycle can be perceived: also the end of it—the expansion of radius till there is no more ​room to expand and the earliest conditions are reproduced in a new form. Expansion of radius is, therefore, an eternal law. But it is a law the existence of which has been little perceived; perhaps not perceived at all.

But, however expanded, what advantage can it confer if Fitness to Win be absent? What advantage does 'two to one' confer without this factor? What gain is there in anything without this essential quality?

Naval efficiency qua naval efficiency cannot replace it. Athens and Carthage had that, but the Fitter to Win found ways to overcome them. Superior weapons cannot accomplish it—Russian guns were as good or better than the Japanese, nor was the Russian gunnery bad had it had a chance. The Fitness to secure the chance was lacking. Genius in the leaders cannot necessarily confer it: surely Hannibal was as great or greater a genius than Scipio, Napoleon than Wellington. Nelson was no greater tactical or strategical genius than many of his opponents. Personal courage does not supply it; the Russians fighting the Japanese lacked nothing in the way of courage.

In daily life how often do we see a man, without advantages, hampered often in innumerable ways, enter some profession and rise over the heads of others with infinitely superior advantages. Why does he so rise? It is not blind chance. We call it 'ability,' but we know that, in nine cases out of ten, whatever the profession adopted the result would have been the ​same. It is general superiority—Fitness to Win. It is with nations as with individuals. And so the destiny of every nation does not primarily reside in its Sea Power or its Land Power or any of these things, but in the individual fitness of its units, and in this collective average superiority to the collective average of the enemy.