Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Sea Fallacies : A Plea For First Principles What do we mean by "sea-power" and "command of the sea" ? What really is a navy and how does it gain these things? How come navies into existence? Of what constituents, human and material, are they composed ? How are the human elements taught, trained, commanded, and led ? How are the ships grouped and distributed, and the weapons fought in war? To the countrymen of Nelson, and to those of his great interpreter, Mahan, these might at first sight seem very superfluous questions, for they, almost of natural instinct, should understand that strange but overwhelming force that has made them. To the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Empires that owe allegiance to the British Crown, to the United States of America, sea-power is at once their origin and the fundamental essential of their continued free and independent existence. And it is their predominant races that have produced the world's greatest sea fighters and sea writers. It is to the British Fleet that the world owes its promise of safety from German diabolism bred of autocracy. It is to sea-power that America must look if she is to finish the work the Allies have begun. With so great a stake in the sea, Great Britain and America should have fathomed its mysteries. But, despite the fighters and the writers, the sea in a great measure has kept its secret hidden. In every age the truth has been the possession of but a few. Countriesfor a time have followed the light, and have then, as it were, been suddenly struck blind, and the fall of empires has followed the loss of vision. The world explains the British Empire of to-day, and the great American nation which has sprung from it, by a happy congenital talent for colonizing waste places, for self-governmen...