We may assume that the coming fleet will come across with all possible precautions for protecting itself against detection by the defender's scouts, and therefore against an unexpected attack, by night or by day. It cannot receive an unexpected attack unless surprised; and how can it be surprised, if it has more scouts, faster scouts, and more powerfully armed scouts than the defending fleet has? The possession of the more powerful scouts, however, will be valuable to the enemy, not only for forming a screen as a protection against enemy scouts, but also for scouting and thereby getting information for itself. A numerous squadron of scouts of different kinds, sent out ahead and on each flank would see any of our scouts that saw them; and the scouts that were the more powerful would force the weaker scouts back to the arms of their own main body, toward which the more powerful scouts would, of course, advance. The weaker scouts, therefore, would have no value whatever as a screen, save in retarding the advance of the stronger scouts, and in delaying their getting information. If the coming fleet is more powerful than the defending fleet, and has a more numerous and powerful scouting force, it will, therefore, be able to push back the defending fleet, whether an actual battle occurs or not; and it will be able to bring over, also, a large invading force in transports if its fighting superiority be great enough. Furthermore, if we have not fortified and protected the places which the enemy would wish to seize and use as advanced naval bases, the enemy will be able to seize them, and will doubtless do so. Of course, this is so obvious as to seem hardly worth declaring; and yet some people hesitate even to admit it, and thereby they assume a passive condition of moral cowardice; for they know that a strong force has always overcome a weaker force that opposed it in war; and that it always will do so, until force ceases to be force. They know that force is that which moves, or tends to move, matter; and that the greater the force, the more surely it will move matter, or anything that opposes it. If, however, we establish naval bases near our valuable commercial and strategic ports, both on our coast and in the Caribbean, and if we fortify them so that an enemy could not take them quickly, the condition of the enemy fleet will be much less happy; because it will have to remain out on the ocean, where fuelling and repairing are very difficult, and where it will be exposed, day and night, especially at night, to attack by destroyers and submarines; and in case necessity demands the occasional division of the force, it must beware of attacks on the separated portions of the fleet. The condition of a large fleet under way on an enemy's coast is one requiring much patience and endurance, and one in which the number of vessels is liable to be continuously reduced by the guerilla warfare of the defenders.