It is only as a broad conception that this classification has value.  Though it fixes the general trend of our operations, it will not in itself affect their character.  For a maritime Power at least it is obvious that this must be so.  For in any circumstances it is impossible for such a Power either to establish its defence or develop fully its offence without securing a working control of the sea by aggressive action against the enemy’s fleets.  Furthermore, we have always found that however strictly our aim may be defensive, the most effective means of securing it has been by counter-attack over-sea, either to support an ally directly or to deprive our enemy of his colonial possessions.  Neither category, then, excludes the use of offensive operations nor the idea of overthrowing our enemy so far as is necessary to gain our end.  In neither case does the conception lead us eventually to any other objective than the enemy’s armed forces, and particularly his naval forces.  The only real difference is this—­that if our object be positive our general plan must be offensive, and we should at least open with a true offensive movement; whereas if our object be negative our general plan will be preventive, and we may bide our time for our counter-attack.  To this extent our action must always tend to the offensive.  For counter-attack is the soul of defence.  Defence is not a passive attitude, for that is the negation of war.  Rightly conceived, it is an attitude of alert expectation.  We wait for the moment when the enemy shall expose himself to a counter-stroke, the success of which will so far cripple him as to render us relatively strong enough to pass to the offensive ourselves.

From these considerations it will appear that, real and logical as the classification is, to give it the designation “offensive and defensive” is objectionable from every point of view.  To begin with, it does not emphasise what the real and logical distinction is.  It suggests that the basis of the classification is not so much a difference of object as a difference in the means employed to achieve the object.  Consequently we find ourselves continually struggling with the false assumption that positive war means using attack, and negative war being content with defence.

That is confusing enough, but a second objection to the designation is far more serious and more fertile of error.  For the classification “offensive and defensive” implies that offensive and defensive are mutually exclusive ideas, whereas the truth is, and it is a fundamental truth of war, that they are mutually complementary.  All war and every form of it must be both offensive and defensive.  No matter how clear our positive aim nor how high our offensive spirit, we cannot develop an aggressive line of strategy to the full without the support of the defensive on all but the main lines of operation.  In tactics it is the same.  The most convinced devotee of attack admits the spade as well as the