The object of accumulating stores at a secondary base is to facilitate the supply of fighting ships, it being rather confidently assumed that the ships can go to it to replenish without being obliged to absent themselves for long from the positions in which they could best counteract the efforts of the enemy. When war is going on it is not within the power of either side to arrange its movements exactly as it pleases. Movements must, at all events very often, conform to those of the enemy. It is not a bad rule when going to war to give your enemy credit for a certain amount of good sense. Our enemy's good sense is likely to lead him to do exactly what we wish him not to do, and not to do that which we wish him to do. We should, of course, like him to operate so that our ships will not be employed at an inconvenient distance from our base of supplies. If we have created permanent bases in time of peace the enemy will know their whereabouts as well as we do ourselves, and, unless he is a greater fool than it is safe to think he is, he will try to make us derive as little benefit from them as possible. He is likely to extend his operations to localities at a distance from the places to which, if we have the secondary base system of supply, he knows for certain that our ships must resort. We shall have to do one of two things--either let him carry on his operations undisturbed, or conform to his movements. To this is due the common, if not invariable, experience of naval warfare, that the fleet which assumes the offensive has to establish what are sometimes called 'flying bases,' to which it can resort at will. This explains why Nelson rarely used Gibraltar as a base; why we occupied Balaclava in 1854; and why the Americans used Guantanamo Bay in 1898. The flying base is not fortified or garrisoned in advance. It is merely a convenient anchorage, in a good position as regards the circumstances of the war; and it can be abandoned for another, and resumed, if desirable, as the conditions of the moment dictate. It is often argued that maintenance of stocks of stores at a secondary base gives a fleet a free hand and at least relieves it from the obligation of defending the line of communications. We ought to examine both contentions. It is not easy to discover where the freedom comes in if you must always proceed to a certain place for supplies, whether convenient or not. It may be, and very likely will be, of the utmost importance in war for a ship to remain on a particular station. If her coal is running short and can only be replenished by going to a base, go to the base she must, however unfortunate the consequences. It has been mentioned already that nearly every item on our store list has to be brought to a base by sea. Let us ascertain to what extent the accumulation of a stock at a place removes the necessity of defending the communication line. Coal is so much the greater item that consideration of it will cover that of all the rest.