Later official descriptions of the Home Fleet explained that it was part
of the Admiralty design that this fleet should offer the first
resistance to an enemy. The most careful examination of these
descriptions leaves no room for doubt that the idea of the Admiralty was
that one of its fleets should, in case of war, form a sort of
advance-guard to the rest of the navy. But it is a fundamental truth
that in naval war an advance-guard is absurd and impossible. In the
operations of armies, an advance-guard is both necessary and useful. Its
function is to delay the enemy's army until such time as the
commander-in-chief shall have assembled his own forces, which may be, to
some extent, scattered on the march. This delay is always possible on
land, because the troops can make use of the ground, that is, of the
positions which it affords favourable for defence, and because by means
of those positions a small force can for a long time hold in check the
advance of a very much larger one. But at sea there are no positions
except those formed by narrow straits, estuaries, and shoals, where land
and sea are more or less mixed up. The open sea is a uniform surface
offering no advantage whatever to either side. There is nothing in naval
warfare resembling the defence of a position on land, and the whole
difference between offence and defence at sea consists in the will of
one side to bring on an action and that of the other side to avoid or
postpone it.
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