Inherent Power of a Fleet.—­An idea of the power exertable by a fleet of modern ships may be derived from the following comparison.

When Sherman made his wonderful march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, he made a march whose details are historically known, which was unopposed, which was over a flat country, in good weather, and without the aid of railroad-trains.  It was a march, pure and simple; and inasmuch as men are the same now as they were then, it gives excellent data of the way in which purely military or army power can move from one place to another, while still preserving its character and exercising its functions.  Similarly, when Admiral Schroeder, in November, 1910, went from the east coast of the United States to the English Channel, his march was unopposed, its details are known, and it gave an excellent illustration of how naval power can move from one place to another, while still preserving its character and exercising its functions.

Now General Sherman was a man of world-wide fame, and so were some of his generals, and Sherman’s fame will last for centuries.  Compared with Sherman, Admiral Schroeder was obscure; and compared with Sherman’s officers, Admiral Schroeder’s were obscure.  Sherman’s soldiers, privates and all, were made glorious for the rest of their lives by having been in Sherman’s march to the sea, while Admiral Schroeder’s sailors achieved no glory at all.  So, the next paragraph is not intended to detract in the slightest from Sherman and his army, but simply to point out the change in conditions that mechanical progress has brought about.

The statement of comparison is simply that when General Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea his army composed 62,000 men, and it took him twenty-five days to go about 230 land miles or 200 sea miles; and when Admiral Schroeder went from our coast to Europe he had 16 ships, and he made the trip of more than 3,000 sea miles in less than fourteen days.  Disregarding twenty-eight 5-inch guns, two hundred and fifty-two 3-inch guns, and a lot of smaller guns, and disregarding all the torpedoes, Admiral Schroeder took eighty-four 12-inch guns, ninety-six 8-inch guns, eighty-eight 7-inch guns, and forty-eight 6-inch guns, all mounted and available; which, assuming the power of the modern musket as a unit, equalled more than 5,000,000 modern muskets.

Such an enormous transfer of absolute, definite, available power would be impossible on land, simply because no means has been devised to accomplish it.  Such a transfer on land would be the transfer of ninety times as many soldiers as Sherman had (even supposing they had modern muskets) over fifteen times the distance and at thirty times the speed; and as the work done in going from one place to another varies practically as the square of the speed, a transfer on land equivalent in magnitude and speed to Schroeder’s would be a performance 90 x 15 x 30^2= 1,215,000 times as great as Sherman’s.