Later official descriptions of the Home Fleet explained that it was part of the Admiralty design that this fleet should offer the first resistance to an enemy. The most careful examination of these descriptions leaves no room for doubt that the idea of the Admiralty was that one of its fleets should, in case of war, form a sort of advance-guard to the rest of the navy. But it is a fundamental truth that in naval war an advance-guard is absurd and impossible. In the operations of armies, an advance-guard is both necessary and useful. Its function is to delay the enemy's army until such time as the commander-in-chief shall have assembled his own forces, which may be, to some extent, scattered on the march. This delay is always possible on land, because the troops can make use of the ground, that is, of the positions which it affords favourable for defence, and because by means of those positions a small force can for a long time hold in check the advance of a very much larger one. But at sea there are no positions except those formed by narrow straits, estuaries, and shoals, where land and sea are more or less mixed up. The open sea is a uniform surface offering no advantage whatever to either side. There is nothing in naval warfare resembling the defence of a position on land, and the whole difference between offence and defence at sea consists in the will of one side to bring on an action and that of the other side to avoid or postpone it. At sea a small force which endeavours by fighting to delay the movement of a large force exposes itself to destruction without any corresponding gain of time. Accordingly, at sea, there is no analogy to the action of an advance-guard, and the mere fact that such an idea should find its way into the official accounts of the Admiralty's views regarding the opening move of a possible war must discredit the strategy of the Admiralty in the judgment of all who have paid any attention to the nature of naval war.