Perfect preparedness of personnel and material is essential because events follow each other so rapidly in war that no preparation can be made after it has begun.  To fight is the most intense work a man can do; and a war is nothing but a fight.  No matter how great or how small a war may be, no war can lose the essential qualities of a fight, or (save in the treatment of prisoners) be more brutal or less brutal when fought between two little savage tribes, than when fought between two colossal groups of Christian nations, civilized to the highest point.  War is the acme of the endeavor of man.  Each side determines that it will win at all costs and at all hazards; that nobody’s comfort, happiness, or safety shall receive the slightest consideration; that everybody’s strength and courage must be worked to the limit by night as well as by day, and that there must be no rest and no yielding to any softening influence whatever; that the whole strength and mind of the nation, and of every individual in it, must be devoted, and must be sacrificed, if need be, to the cause at stake.

In war, a navy’s primary duty has usually been to protect the coast and trade routes of its country; and in order to do this, it has had to be able to oppose to an attacking fleet a defending fleet more militarily effective.  If it were less effective, even if no invasion were attempted, the attacking fleet could cripple or destroy the defending fleet and then institute a blockade.  In modern times an effective blockade, or at least a hostile patrol of trade routes, could be held hundreds of miles from the coast, where the menace of submarines would be negligible; and this blockade would stop practically all import and export trade.  This would compel the country to live exclusively on its own resources, and renounce intercourse with the outside world.  Some countries could exist a long time under these conditions.  But they would exist merely, and the condition of mere existence would never end until they sued for peace; because, even if new warships were constructed with which to beat off the enemy, each new and untrained ship would be sunk or captured shortly after putting out to sea as, on June 1, 1813, in Massachusetts Bay, the American frigate Chesapeake was captured and nearly half her crew were killed and wounded in fifteen minutes by a ship almost identical in the material qualities of size and armament—­the better-trained British frigate Shannon.

For these reasons, every nation that has acquired and has long retained prosperity, has realized that every country liable to be attacked by any navy must either be defended by some powerful country, or else must keep a navy ready to repel the attack successfully.  To do this, the defending navy must be ready when the attack comes; because if not ready then, it will never have time to get ready.  In regard to our own country, much stress is laid by some intelligent people—­who forget the Chesapeake and Shannon—­on the 3,000 miles of water stretching between the United States and Europe.  This 3,000 miles is, of course, a factor of importance, but it is not a prohibition, because it can be traversed with great surety and quickness—­with much greater surety and quickness, for instance, than the 12,000 miles traversed by the Russian fleet, in 1904, in steaming from Russia to Japan.