The Navy as a Fighting MachineFiske, Bradley A. (Bradley Allen)
History
The Navy as a Fighting Machine
Fiske, Bradley A. (Bradley Allen)
Naval art and science; Naval strategy; Navies; Sea-power; United States. Navy -- Management
Courage, experience, and professional pride they possessed
in abundance. Man for man, in all virile qualities, neither officers
nor men were inferior to their foes. But one thing their generals
lacked, and that was education for war. Strategy was almost a sealed
book to them." Also, "Moltke committed no mistake. Long before war
had been declared every possible precaution had been made. And
these included much more than arrangements for rapid mobilization,
the assembly of superior numbers completely organized, and the
establishment of magazines. The enemy's numbers, armaments, readiness,
and efficiency had been submitted to a most searching examination.
Every possible movement that might be made, however unlikely, had
been foreseen; every possible danger that might arise, however
remote, discussed and guarded against"; also, "That the Prussian
system should be imitated, and her army deprived of its monopoly
of high efficiency, was naturally inevitable. Every European state
has to-day its college, its intelligence department, its schools of
instruction, and its course of field maneuvers and field firing."
Strategy may be divided into two parts, war strategy and preparation
strategy; and of these two, preparation strategy is by far the
more important.
War strategy deals with the laying out of plans of campaign after
war has begun, and the handling of forces until they come into
contact with the enemy, when tactics takes those forces in its
charge. It deals with actual situations, arranges for the provisioning,
fuelling, and moving of actual forces, contests the field against an
actual enemy, the size and power of which are fairly well known--and
the intentions of which are sometimes known and sometimes not.
The work of the strategist in war is arduous, pressing, definite,
and exciting; and results are apt to follow decisions quickly.
He plays the greatest and oldest game the world has ever known,
with the most elaborate instruments, and for the largest stakes.
In most wars, the antagonists have been so nearly equal in point
of personnel and material that the result has seemed to be decided
by the relative degrees of skill of the strategists on both sides.
This has been the verdict of history; and victorious commanders
in all times and in all lands have achieved rarer glories, and
been crowned with higher honors, than any other men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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