So far, then, the Government’s cautious clinging to a general defensive attitude, instead of seeking out the enemy’s fleet, was justified, but it must be remembered that Drake from the first had insisted it was a question of time as well as place.  If he had been permitted to make the movement when he first proposed it, there is good reason to believe that the final stages of the Spanish mobilisation could not have been carried out that year; that is to say, the various divisions of the Armada could not have been assembled into a fleet.  But information as to its condition was at the time very uncertain, and in view of the negotiations that were on foot, there were, moreover, high political reasons for our not taking too drastic an offensive if a reasonable alternative existed.

The principles, then, which we distil from this, the original case of “seeking out,” are, firstly, the moral value of seizing the initiative, and, secondly, the importance of striking before the enemy’s mobilisation is complete.  The idea of overthrow by a great fleet action is not present, unless we find it in a not clearly formulated idea of the Elizabethan admirals of striking a fleet when it is demoralised, as the Armada was by its first rebuff, or immediately on its leaving port before it had settled down.

In our next naval struggle with the Dutch in the latter half of the seventeenth century the principle of overthrow, as we have seen, became fully developed.  It was the keynote of the strategy which was evolved, and the conditions which forced it to recognition also emphasised the principles of seeking out and destroying.  It was a case of a purely naval struggle, in which there were no military considerations to deflect naval strategy.  It was, moreover, a question of narrow seas, and the risk of missing contact which had cramped the Elizabethans in their oceanic theatre was a negligible factor.  Yet fresh objections to using the “seeking out” maxim as a strategical panacea soon declared themselves.

The first war opened without any trace of the new principle.  The first campaign was concerned in the old fashion entirely with the attack and defence of trade, and such indecisive actions as occurred were merely incidental to the process.  No one appears to have realised the fallacy of such method except, perhaps, Tromp.  The general instructions he received were that “the first and principal object was to do all possible harm to the English,” and to that end “he was given a fleet in order to sail to the damage and offence of the English fleet, and also to give convoy to the west.”  Seeing at once the incompatibility of the two functions, he asked for more definite instructions.  What, for instance, was he to do if he found a chance of blockading the main English fleet at its base?  Was he to devote himself to the blockade and “leave the whole fleet of merchantmen to be a prey to a squadron of fast-sailing frigates,” or was he to continue