THE COMMAND OF THE SEA We have seen that when two States go to war the primary object of each is to subdue and if possible to destroy the armed forces of the other. Until that is done either completely, or to such an extent as to induce the defeated belligerent to submit, the conflict of wills cannot be determined, and the two States cannot return to those normal relations, involving no violence or force, which constitute a state of peace. If they have a common frontier this circumstance indicates what is, as a general rule, the best and most efficient way of securing the object to be attained. The armed forces of both belligerents lie at the outset within their respective frontiers. If those of either can be constrained by the superior strategy of the other to keep within their own territory, the initial advantage lies with the belligerent who has so constrained them, and the war has in common parlance been carried into the enemy's country. In other words, the invasion of the enemy's territory has begun, and pressure has been brought to bear on his will which, if maintained without intermission and with an intensity duly proportioned to its growing extent, must in the end subdue it. To this there is no alternative. To invade the enemy's territory at all is to inflict a reverse on his armed forces, which would assuredly have prevented the invasion if they could. The territory in the rear of the invading army is in greater or less degree brought under the control of the invader and thereby temporarily lost to the invaded State. If this process is continued the authority and the resources of the invaded State are progressively diminished, until at last when the capital is occupied and the remainder of the invaded country lies open to the advance of the invader, the defeated State must sue for peace on such terms as the invader may concede, because it has nothing left to fight for, and no force wherewithal to fight. This is of course merely an abstract and generalized description of the course of a war on land, but I need not consider its concrete details nor analyse any of the conditions which may, and in the concrete often do, impede or deflect its course, because my sole purpose is to show how armed force operates in the abstract to subdue the will of the belligerent who is worsted in the conflict. It operates by the destruction of his armed forces, by the occupation of his territory, and by the consequent extinction of his authority and appropriation of his resources. He can only recover the latter and liberate his territory by submitting to such terms as the invader may dictate or concede.