The command of the ocean ways are, then, of tremendous consequences in war--so great, indeed, that the control of sea communications has often been put forth as the primary object to be aimed at by sea-power. That it is the object of sea-power victoriously used we have already seen. But so long as the enemy possesses forces that actually disturb the tranquil enjoyment of sea communications, command is certainly _qualified_, and if he have in reserve unused and unimpaired forces for attacking and defeating the fleet which secures command, the command of the sea cannot be said to be unconditionally possessed. Consequently, if destruction of the enemy’s armed forces is a necessary condition to real--because indisputable--sea command, it is for victorious battle and for nothing else that fleets exist. These propositions are not only obviously true; they seem to be truly obvious. But in recent history we have witnessed the curious spectacle that an inversion of the order of these two statements did actually create two different and opposed schools of naval thought. The first school saw in victory the first and constant preoccupation of the fleet. It concerned itself, therefore, chiefly with the essentials to victory, and as victory can only come from fighting, it was at the elements of fighting that it worked. It sought to find the most perfect methods of using weapons, because it realized that it was only from the evolution of these that right tactics could be deduced. It studied the campaigns of the past to discover the two great groups of doctrine that our fighting ancestors have bequeathed to us, the first dealing with the science of strategy, the second with the principles of command. They realized that weapons and the ships that carry them do not fight themselves, but must be fought by men; and they wished those men rightly educated and trained in the subtle and complex science of their high calling. To them, in short, sea war was an affair of knowledge applied by men trained both in the wisdom and in the lofty spirit of those that had excelled in naval war before. And, faithful to the traditions of the past, no less than eager for research into all the undeveloped potentialities of the products of modern progress, they pinned their faith on ability to force the enemy to battle, and to beat him there when battle came. The other school went for a short cut to naval triumph. If only they could get a fleet of ships so big, so fabulously armed, so numerous as to make it seem to the enemy that his fleet was too feeble to attack, why then battle would be made altogether superfluous, and no further worry over so unlikely a contingency was necessary. They did not, therefore, trouble to inquire either into the processes needed for bringing battle about, or into what was necessary for success when battle came. They passed on to the contemplation of what can only be the fruit of victory--as if victory were not a condition precedent!