2.  To repel an expedition striving to establish a base in the Caribbean, preliminary to an attack on our Atlantic continental coast or on the Panama Canal.

3.  To make an expedition to a distant point, to prevent the occupation of territory by a foreign government in the south Atlantic or the Pacific.

First Object.—­To repel an attack made directly on the Atlantic coast, the plan must provide for getting the needed additions to the fleet with the utmost despatch.  Owing to the keen appreciation by European nations of the value of secrecy and despatch, any attack contemplated by one of them on our Atlantic coast would be prepared behind the curtain, and nothing about its preparation would be allowed to be reported to the outside world until after the attacking force had actually sailed.  For the force to reach our shores, not more than two weeks would be needed, even if the fleet stopped at mid-Atlantic islands to lay in fuel.  It is very doubtful if the fact of stopping there would be allowed to be reported, as the commander-in-chief could easily take steps to prevent it.  It is possible that merchant steamers might meet the fleet, and report the fact by radio, but it is not at all certain.  A great proportion of the steamers met would willingly obey an order not to report it, or even to have their radio apparatus deranged; either because of national sympathy, or because the captain was “insulted with a very considerable bribe.”  The probability, therefore, would be that we should hear of the departure of the fleet from Europe, and then hear nothing more about it until it was met by our scouts.

This reasoning shows that to carry out the plans of strategy, logistics would have to provide plans and means to execute those plans, whereby our existing fleet, plus all the additions which strategy demanded, would be waiting at whatever points on the ocean strategy might indicate, before the coming enemy would reach those points.  In other words, logistics must make and execute such plans that all the fleet which strategy demands will be at the selected points in less than two weeks from the time the enemy leaves the shores of Europe.

Of course, the conditions will not necessarily be such that strategy will demand that all our reserve ships, especially the oldest ships, shall go out to sea with the active fleet, ready to engage in battle.  Maybe some of them will be found to be so slow and equipped with such short-range guns, that they would be an embarrassment to the commander-in-chief, instead of an assistance.  Unless it is clear, however, that any ship, especially a battleship, would be an embarrassment, her place is clearly with the fighting fleet.  The issue of the battle cannot be known in advance; and as everything will depend upon that issue, no effort and no instrument should be spared that can assist in gaining victory.  And even if the older ships might not be of material assistance in the early stages of a battle, they would