In any case, the decision announced revealed an ignorance of one of the fundamental conditions of naval warfare, which differentiates it completely from operations on land.  A ship in commission carries on board everything that is necessary for a fight.  She can be made ready for battle in a few minutes on the order to clear for action.  No other mobilisation is necessary for a fleet in commission, and if a war should break out suddenly, as wars normally always do break out, whichever side is able at once with its fleets already in commission to strike the first blow has the incalculable advantage of the initiative.

A fleet divided between several ports and not fully manned is not a fleet in commission; it is not ready, and its assembly as a fleet depends on a contingency, which there is no means of guaranteeing, that the enemy shall not be able to prevent its assembly by moving a fleet immediately to a point at sea from which it would be able to oppose by force the union of the constituent parts of the divided and unready fleet.

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.

At sea a small force which endeavours by fighting to delay the movement of a large force exposes itself to destruction without any corresponding gain of time.  Accordingly, at sea, there is no analogy to the action of an advance-guard, and the mere fact that such an idea should find its way into the official accounts of the Admiralty’s views regarding the opening move of a possible war must discredit the strategy of the Admiralty in the judgment of all who have paid any attention to the nature of naval war.