To an instructed, thoughtful, naval mind in the United States, there is no contingency affecting the country, as interested in the navy, so menacing as the fear of popular clamor influencing an irresolute, or militarily ignorant, administration to divide the battleship force into two divisions, the Atlantic and the Pacific. A determined President, instructed in military matters, doubtless will not yield, but will endeavor by explanation to appease apprehension and quiet outcry. Nevertheless, the danger exists; and always will exist in proportion as the people do not understand the simple principle that an efficient military body depends for its effect in war—and in peace—less upon its position than upon its concentrated force. This does not ignore position, and its value. On the contrary, it is written with a clear immediate recollection of Napoleon’s pregnant saying, “War is a business of positions.” But the great captain, in the letter in which the phrase occurs, goes on directly to instruct the marshal to whom he is writing so to station the divisions of his corps, for purposes of supply, around a common center, that they can unite rapidly; and can meet the enemy in mass before he can attack any one of them, or move far from his present position against another important French interest. Concentration indeed, in last analysis, may be correctly defined as being itself a choice of position; viz.: that the various corps, or ships, shall not be some in one place, and some in others, but all in one place. We Americans have luckily had an object lesson, not at our own expense, but at that of an old friend. There is commonly believed to have been little effective public opinion in Russia at the time the war with Japan was at hand; such as did manifest itself, in the use of dynamite against officials, seems not to have taken into consideration international relations, military or other. But in the councils of the Empire, however constituted, and whatever the weight of the military element, there was shown in act an absolute disregard of principles so simple, so obvious, and so continually enforced by precept and experience, that the fact would be incomprehensible, had not we all seen, in civil as in military life, that the soundest principles, perfectly well known, fail, more frequently than not, to sustain conduct against prepossession or inclination. That communications dominate strategy, and that the communications of Japan in a continental war would be by sea, were clear as daylight. That the whole navy of Russia, united on the scene, would be sufficient, and half of it probably insufficient, certainly hazardous, was equally plain. Yet, ship by ship, half was assembled in the Far East, until Japan saw that this process of division had been carried as far as suited her interests and declared war; after which of course no Russian battleship could go forward alone.