I am not concerned in any way with the political aspects of this memorable declaration. But its bearing on the naval policy of the British Empire is manifest and direct. England is beyond all question "the greatest naval Power" in the world. The declaration of Germany thus lays upon England the indefeasible obligation of taking care that by no efforts of any other Power shall her "own supremacy"--that is her capacity to secure and maintain the command of the sea in all reasonably probable contingencies of international conflict--be rendered doubtful. There is no State in the world on which decisive defeat at sea would inflict such irretrievable disaster as it would on England and her Empire. These islands would be open to invasion--and if to invasion to conquest and subjugation--the commerce of the whole Empire would be annihilated, and the Empire itself would be dismembered. I need not attempt to determine what measure of naval strength is required to avert this unspeakable calamity. It suffices to say that whatever the measure may be it must be provided and maintained at all hazards. That is merely the axiomatic expression of the things that belong to our peace. It will be observed that the German declaration assumes that "a great naval Power will not, as a rule, be in a position to concentrate all its forces against" a single adversary. This raises at once the question of the distribution of naval force, or of what has been called the peace strategy of position. I shall endeavour to discuss the problem with as little reference as may be to an actual state of war between any two individual and specific naval Powers. I shall merely assume that of two possible belligerents one is so far stronger than the other as to look with confidence to being able in the event of war to secure and maintain its own command of the sea; and in order not to complicate the problem unduly I shall include in the term "belligerent" not merely a single Power but an alliance of one or more separate Powers, while still adhering to the assumption that the relative strength of the two belligerents is as defined above. If England is one of the Powers affected it is manifest from what has already been said that this assumption is a legitimate one.