76 THE TACTICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN DIFFERENT CLASSES 



"speed" ships screening it. It must be guided truly by speed ships reconnoitering and seek- 

 ing for correct information, fighting for it as necessary. 



Thus a strategic necessity forces us to develop our combatant surface fleet along two 

 lines, "strength" ships for the ultimate battle reliance and "speed" ships for auxiliary and pre- 

 liminary service of screening and scouting. 



Yet these speed ships as against each other must be strength ships, for they must live 

 through their own preliminary hostile contacts to do their duty towards their main body 

 previous to the great fleet action ; and after it they must combine sufficient strength with their 

 mobility to sweep up hostile commerce and so accomplish the naval objective. 



If one asks why these speed ships, which accomplish the final step of destroying the hos- 

 tile merchant fleet are not themselves also the strength ships for the main battle, the answer 

 is that concentration for battle, and the battle itself, must precede the dispersion which reaps 

 the fruit of battle. The strength ships must fight and control the seas before the speed ships 

 are wholly free. If we try to combine the two functions, we have design and counter design 

 each accentuating strength, till we arrive at the typical battleship attaining the utmost tactical 

 battle endurance and are obliged to start design anew with a speed ship suitable to cooperate 

 with the battleship. 



To compare the tactical use of the various types of ships we have first to look at the 

 combatant elements embodied in all fighting ships and understand their relationship. These 

 elements comprise means of attack, of defense and of mobility, all resting on the elements 

 of seaworthiness (sea keeping, buoyancy, habitability) as their basis and support. 



RELATIONS OF ATTACK AND DEFENSE. 



The general relations of attack and defense need attention. Passive defense may always 

 be overcome in time; what man has made, man can destroy. In delaying destruction, the 

 defense finds the limit of its powers. 



Defense is useful only in so much as it gives time and opportunity for a fighting man 

 or group of men to develop their own counter attack and destroy the lives of enemies. The 

 aggressive fighting spirit is the soul of warfare. Without it a combatant will attain only 

 defeat at the end. 



As an extreme example of a passive defense we may take the safety vaults of Wall 

 Street. The valuables in the vaults are as strongly protected as steel and cement can pro- 

 tect them, but the real defense is in the watchman and his gun, his honesty and courage. If 

 the watchman fails to take the opportunity to fight when the burglar alarm rings, the 

 strongest vault cannot protect. 



The public was too liable to draw false lessons from the recent bombing attacks on the 

 ex-German battleship Ostfriesland. Her passive defense was as strong as the art of the 

 day could accomplish. This ship was required to be sunk by treaty, and the Navy Depart- 

 ment decided to do so by bombs from the air. The essential in the matter was that there was 

 no one either on board or elsewhere to resist by force the department's resolution to destroy 

 her. The attacking force was uninjured, and so she was destroyed. A bull fight is inter- 

 esting to sporting people because the bull has a chance of injuring his enemy, who must do 

 his best or be killed himself. But the Ostfriesland bull went to a slaughter house for ana- 

 tomical vivisection ending by butchery. 



Combatant strength or endurance as a whole is not the sum of defensive and offensive 

 powers, but more in the nature of a product of these two factors. This has long been 



