WHOEVER DOES not enjoy the conditions requisite for initiating an attack remains on the defensive, and the day has passed when, as before 1914, General Lanrezac2 is said to have told his officers: “If the doors are firmly shut, then I shall discuss the defensive.” Made wise by recent experience, we can now freely converse on the subject.
Defensive elements appear within even the most offensively oriented concepts. An offensive plan virtually must include defensives in certain regions because, except given a very rare superabundance of means, it is impossible to be superior at the chosen point without being weaker, and therefore on the defensive, elsewhere. Embedded in the concepts of strategic manoeuvre and the economy of force is the idea of a local defense even within a resolutely offensive plan.3 Moreover, the defensive is frequently mixed with the offensive in time as well as in space. The evolution of the situation can force an erstwhile attacker to the defensive even though he conducts his campaign with the intention of taking the offensive as soon as possible so as to arrive at a decision.
Indirect protection, which is offensive in nature because it rests on the threat of attacking the enemy, must not exclude direct protection, pure defense, of important objects. . . . For example, in the days of surface warfare, certain forces were always engaged in the protection of convoys. Even a naval power like Britain, though better endowed than anyone else for achieving indirect protection through its naval squadrons, protected its commercial navigation directly. Battle was sometimes sought by employing the fleet itself in the role of direct protection, thus combining the objectives of defense and manoeuvre.
In our day, direct protection is even more favored. Although instantaneous communications facilitate indirect protection, the great speed of modern ships and the consequently briefer duration of their operations reduces the chance of intercepting them. The new tools of war are not vulnerable to indirect protection, the submarine because it can disappear at will, the airplane because of the speed and furtiveness of its attacks. We have come, therefore, even more to rely on direct protection and to accept a great investment in light vessels and aircraft in order to defend our naval forces at sea against adversaries of the same sort.4 One can even ask whether, given the seriousness of the threat from the air, defense should not in some cases replace the offense as aircraft’s primary role. Similarly, defending ships of the line and aircraft carriers against destroyers requires a large number of like vessels. These sacrifices in favor of the defensive are necessary to allow the fleet to deploy its own power offensively.
The offense-defense balance is an ancient problem addressed in the design of any combat ship. In spite of the ardent assertions of the proponents of exclusive offense, it has always been thought reasonable to trade off against armament and speed a respectable measure of protection, even—especially—for an offensive vessel. A ship intended to inflict blows must first be able to endure them. Nowadays, the question is complicated by the need for protection against torpedoes, mines, and, above all, aircraft. Antiaircraft protection—armor, guns, and ammunition—comes at an especially great cost in weight.
Direct protection, though defensive in itself, confers upon the offensive an indispensable freedom of action. It represents security, without which one cannot envision the offensive. Thus, the offensive is not exclusive of the defensive but demands its participation in every area.
Defense obviously reigns when attack is impossible. To understand defense by fleets too weak to take the offensive, we must first address the old notion of the “fleet in being.”
THE FLEET IN BEING
The defensive strategy of the “fleet in being” was first introduced by Herbert Lord Torrington, Tourville’s luckless enemy at the battle of Beachy Head. Torrington described his intentions both in the correspondence that he exchanged with the British government before the battle and in the defense that he presented to the court-martial that judged him afterwards.
At the beginning of the campaign of 1690, when he had not been reinforced by his Dutch allies nor by Killigrew’s Mediterranean force and was separated from Shovell’s5 forces in the Irish Sea, Torrington had considerably smaller forces than Tourville, who had united with Châteaurenault.6 He hoped, therefore, to take a waiting position, avoiding battle and withdrawing in front of Tourville behind the sand banks in the mouth of the Thames, where he would be in a good position not only to repulse attacks but to join up with the detached ships that would make their way to him via the coastal channels.7
More significantly, Torrington attributed to this plan the special virtue of paralyzing French offensive operations. “As long as we observe the French,” he wrote to his government, “they can make no attack against our ships or coast without running great risks.” Rejecting this analysis, the government ordered Torrington to attack Tourville, and the defeat at Beachy Head followed. Torrington took refuge in the Thames whence he vented his anger by evoking once again his earlier plan: “Had I been left alone, I would have prevented any attack against the land and assured the security of the fleets and merchant ships.” Tourville, meanwhile master of the sea, cruised a Channel empty of enemies.
The commentaries on the event make interesting reading. For Corbett, Torrington was the victor of the affair.8 Tourville was not able to act against the ships in the western Channel, which had time to reach Plymouth harbor, nor to destroy the British fleet in detail. Those ships not sunk at Beachy Head were safely moored in the Thames or elsewhere.
Britain’s Admiral Colomb,9 of whom we will speak again later, was still more explicit. “A fleet in being, even defeated, even reduced and shut up behind unmarked sand banks was sufficiently powerful virtually to paralyze on sea as well as land the action of an apparently victorious fleet.”
Admiral Mahan saw more clearly. “It was not the beaten and scattered Anglo-Dutch fleet which guaranteed Britain against invasion. It was the softness or inertia of Tourville and the lack of French transports.”10 Mahan is right. The victorious Tourville failed to exploit his success by pursuit of further operations, but contented himself with parading from one end of the Channel to the other and executing a minor action at Teignmouth before returning to Brest. He and the French government lacked an overall plan. Had things been different, if, as two years later, an invasion of Britain had been planned, or if there had been an attempt to intercept enemy maritime communications with Ireland, one wonders how Torrington could have responded other than by taking the offensive, that is, by abandoning a “fleet in being” attitude that protected nothing at all. One can assume that Tourville would have acted on this assumption and would have organized his forces to provide security against Torrington’s likely intervention. In other words, he would have intelligently achieved the compromise that we described earlier.11 Furthermore, his enemy’s appearance could not but have pleased him. It would have allowed him to impose a second battle upon an unwilling adversary and probably finish the work begun at Beachy Head. But at no moment would Tourville have been “paralyzed.”
Born of an erroneous understanding of a situation, the theory of the fleet in being has been revived repeatedly up to our own day. We rediscover it in the eighteenth-century writings of British Admiral Kempenfelt,12 many of whose other ideas are very good. In our day, Admiral Colomb, as we saw above, made himself Torrington’s advocate and the modern exponent of the theory of the fleet in being. In the third edition of Naval Warfare, published in 1899, he reiterated his early thesis and affirmed dogmatically that “the sea ought to be cleared of every fleet or squadron before advancing naval war a single step as in the assault on territory.” Inspired by Colomb, others have further expanded the thesis as far as to assert that the mere existence of a fleet, even an inferior one, even one locked in harbor, ought to block any seaborne attack and to compromise any exploitation by the adversary of his domination of communications. The exaggeration is obvious. If it is excessive temerity for the inferior party to sail out into battle and destruction, one cannot found great hopes of the method of the fleet in being against an active, enterprising adversary who is knowledgeable of his profession.
This does not prevent some from seeking in past events the confirmation of the theory of the fleet in being. . . .13 In 1914, our navy objected to transporting our North African soldiers across the Mediterranean until after the annihilation of the enemy fleet, citing not only the excellent thesis of the preeminence of the fleet but the rather less solid notion of the fleet in being. Under pressure from the army, which absolutely required troops from Africa, the navy had to agree to set aside these doctrines and to begin the transport at the very beginning of the war in spite of the Goeben’s and the Breslau’s role of fleet in being. The very powerful protection allotted to the operation, too powerful even in view of its wholly defensive objective, permitted its unhindered execution.
In the North Sea, another, much more redoubtable, fleet in being appeared—Germany’s High Seas Fleet. Although confined to the Helgoland Bight, it merited the most serious attention. But the existence of the High Seas Fleet did not prevent such urgent Allied actions as the transport of the British army to France, which was rendered possible by the strong cover provided by the British Grand Fleet. That was the beginning. Then the situation stabilized. Behind the impenetrable rampart of the Grand Fleet, the stronger side continued, in spite of the losses inflicted by submarines, to exploit its domination of the sea to maintain external communications, transport armies, and initiate major overseas operations. All of this happened, thanks to geography’s cooperation, in spite of an enemy fleet in being, whose ultimate influence on events was minimal.
Britain’s strong coverage of the North Sea paralyzed the High Seas Fleet and created a singular spirit of “wait and see” among the British. What good was there in risking decisive battle, in challenging the traps of German submarines, when the German fleet was doing little harm and one already enjoyed all of the benefits that could accrue from a victorious encounter? Such ideas underlaid the passionate debates over Jellicoe’s conduct at the battle of Jutland. They explain Mr. Churchill’s comment in London Magazine in the autumn of 1918 that “the British had no need to seek this battle. . . . Even without a Trafalgar, the entire consequences of a Trafalgar persisted and acted.” The thesis is logically false; to destroy the enemy is never irrelevant. But it is easy to see how people were led to it by the evident impotence of the fleet in being.
The error of denying the usefulness of the decisive battle is most common to those who, looking only at the western front, neglected the Baltic problem. On this matter, Churchill made belated amends in volume three of The World Crisis. It was important to destroy as many German ships as possible so as to prevent them from playing the role of fleet in being in the Baltic and thereby deriving the useful advantages of communication with the Swedes and support for army operations against Russia. But at the time, the matter did not receive the attention it deserved. The Baltic was treated as a secondary theater and enemy superiority there as unable to compensate for his inferiority elsewhere.
In sum, the error of the integral doctrine of the fleet in being consists of the belief that the mere existence of such a fleet suffices to produces an effect, even if said fleet is moribund, and that it will necessarily paralyze a superior enemy who is master of the sea. The concept has never impressed those who chose to act in spite of the fleet in being, who had the means and knew how to use them. Moreover, in our day, can this fleet even boast of being out of reach in its bases? Does the action of enemy aviation not undermine the very foundation of the theory, the invulnerability of the protected fleet? The doctrine must be improved if one wishes to derive an acceptable defensive method.
THE CONDUCT OF THE DEFENSIVE
The side whose inferiority on the surface condemns him to the defensive ought always, in spite of his unfavorable situation, to try to be as active and aggressive as possible. His fleet ought to remember that mere existence does not suffice to convey the title of “fleet in being” and that, to have an effect on events, it must give proof of life. Thus, it must act to impose its will to the extent that its means allow. It must take as much initiative as possible, even if nothing decisive results.
The defensive must therefore above all avoid sliding into the passive state to which abusive interpretation of the theory of the fleet in being inexorably leads. The opinions of the old masters of war are unanimous on this point, and all of them favor what one calls, for lack of a better term, the “defensive-offensive.” Jomini, for example, praises “the general who waits on the defensive with the firm resolution to maneuver against his adversary in order to seize the moral advantage which the offensive gives.” Clausewitz develops the same idea: “The defense frequently changes form and ought to pass during the course of the action from parry to riposte. . . . To conserve his part in directing the conduct of war, the defender must return the blows he received. . . . Defensive action therefore includes offensive actions. This form of war must not be represented as a shield but rather as an arm as quick to riposte as to parry.”14 According to Rüstow, “For the defensive to be as strong as possible, an offensive idea must govern all preparations.”
The defender’s goal, at sea as on land, will be to oppose a decision. In naval war, this means preventing the enemy from peacefully enjoying the domination of communications. It means leaving that domination in suspense, in dispute, through operations that keep the adversary from gaining definitive control of the situation. History shows this to be possible to a certain degree and that obstacles imposed upon the enemy’s activities can sometimes have great value, especially if coordinated with one’s own efforts to seek a decision in another domain, through land war, for example.
On land, the defensive evokes principally the idea of positional warfare and fortifications. These concepts play a role in a naval defensive through the intervention of the coast, but the principal element of the naval defensive is the activity of the inferior force. The idea of manoeuvre consists, in essence, of avoiding a decisive battle while unceasingly harassing the enemy by limited offensives wherever and whenever one finds a favorable opportunity. Short, rapid, intermittent tactical offensives that avoid coming to grips with superior forces are the normal method. The naval defensive ought to have a constant will to counterattack, always seeking and exploiting the minor offensive but knowing to abstain in unfavorable conditions.
Above all, this strategy demands mobility; its law is movement. Thus, although defending forces can and sometimes even must exploit coastal positions for refuge, defense, and resupply, dependence on the land must be temporary. As long as the defender utilizes these positions, he yields the sea to the enemy, leaving to his mercy what ought to be protected and failing to upset the enemy’s operations. A defending fleet that finds itself on the coast should strive to leave it as soon as possible and as soon as a proper occasion for action appears on the horizon.
Counteroffensives are aimed at manageable fractions of the enemy fleet or against his communications and coasts. In principle, anything is good that in any way harms the adversary militarily, materially, economically, or psychologically. Action against communications and coasts can pay a big dividend, not only directly but also in contributing to manoeuvre by causing the enemy to disperse his resources in the attempt to protect himself everywhere. The disruption of the enemy dispositions, the division of his forces, and the immobilization of some of them may perhaps provide a favorable occasion for manoeuvre against the enemy fleet. Anything that weakens his fleet is of great importance. It remains the supreme objective, however contorted the road one must follow to seek it. Naturally, the more numerous and geographically dispersed are the enemy interests, the greater his extent of coastline, and the more lines of communications he must protect, the more successful will be the method.
The game is difficult, certainly, and easier to prescribe in theory than to put into practice. But it has been played in the past and will be again in the future because modern conditions favor it. The commander upon whom the task falls will know some unpleasant hours. He will have need of imagination, ingenuity, and vision, as well as prudence and patience. He must retain full freedom from constraints like the demands of nervous public opinion for an immediate offensive. . . .
The side that practices the defensive will naturally avail itself maximally of all of its resources. The first, passive resource, which one can use but not to any significant extent modify, is geography, that is to say, “terrain,” strategic terrain because tactical terrain is virtually nonexistent in naval war. The most important geographic characteristic is obviously the location of coasts and national positions in relation to the theater of operations. It is on these positions that the defender anchors his counterattacks when he has freedom to act and his retreats when he is pressed. If their hydrographic conformation is favorable, they allow him to protect his coastal communications by dispositions on advanced islands, reefs, shallows, etc., and by arrangements of batteries, minefields, aviation, etc. These local peculiarities allow construction of defended anchorages as permanent peacetime bases. . . .
The defender will do well, if he can, to see that the theater of war is shifted to his own waters and as far as possible from those of the enemy. Here, he will be more comfortable than anywhere else—close to his own bases. Near to necessary resupply and repair, he will be able to take advantage of all of his resources, even of ships with a short range of action. He will be able to employ readily his special vessels and his aircraft. The enemy, far from his bases, a bit “in the air,” will be handicapped by the lack of these facilities, especially if the two belligerents are separated by a great expanse of sea.
Thus, the position of the United States during the Spanish-American War was particularly advantageous in comparison with that of the Spanish. Similarly, considerations of this sort led the Japanese to offer their decisive battle against Rodjestvensky very close to their own coasts, though the inspiration behind Tsushima was clearly offensive, not at all defensive as some have sometimes alleged.
In our day, Japan would be well advised in the case of a war against the United States to arrange matters so that the principal operations take place only in Asian waters. Likewise, in the case of a new Franco-German war, all permanent action on our part in the North Sea will run into major difficulties, while we will be very strong in the Channel and, especially, in the Atlantic waters near the Bay of Biscay, where it will be the enemy’s turn to be “out of plumb” and half-paralyzed.
But this is a rather abstract statement of an ideal that cannot always be achieved in practice. To defend territorial possessions or maritime communications in a certain region requires actions there and not elsewhere; the theater of operations is fixed. That is what happened to the Spanish in 1898; Cuba being the focus of the struggle, Spain had to fight in the Caribbean. If the United States were to fight Japan, it would probably be in the Far East and nowhere else because of America’s position in the Philippines.
Finally, let us add that the defender who employs bases for protection during the intervals between his counterattacks must nowadays remember that he can no longer have the security these bases offered in the past, that he is exposed to enemy aviation. Without a powerful antiaircraft installation at his bases, this method of war will be seriously compromised.
But geography is purely passive and useless unless exploited by counterattacks that interfere with the enemy’s activities. These counterattacks will be of a certain kind, obviously of limited scope, without excessive pretensions, and based on certain prerequisites that are not always fulfilled. In brief, they will reflect the relative weakness of the defensive itself. To these actions Corbett gave the apt name “minor counterattacks.”15
Chief among the minor counterattacks is the guerre de course directed against the enemy’s communications, which, as we explained above, is likely to pay a high return in terms of manoeuvre.16 History is full of examples of this classic minor counterattack, among the most famous being those of France under the ancien régime, the Revolution, and the Empire, of the Confederate States of America, and of the Germans in 1914. All of these used the guerre de course against an enemy whose superior naval power they could not challenge in a direct struggle for mastery of the sea. But those who practiced this form of warfare generally committed the mistake of not integrating it into a more general system of war. Notably, they failed to use it as a part of a manoeuvre designed to produce favorable conditions for the clash of fleets. Scheer himself, who clearly enunciated the necessity for this liaison, was not able to achieve it after the disappearance of the surface war against commerce.
His aggressive attitude must not lead the defender to forget that he has his own communications to protect and that their defense can also create favorable opportunities for manoeuvre. The defender must also remember that the protection of communications is partly a matter of the geographical and political conditions that will determine the role of neutrals in supplying the belligerents. . . .
But the defensive is no longer limited to the means of the past. New machines have opened vast horizons to minor counteroffensives. The submarine relies infinitely less on the land as a refuge between counterattacks than do other units. Its sanctuary travels with it, so to speak. Because the submarine can seek the protection of the deep whenever pressed by superior forces, it has a freedom of action unknown to surface ships. The submarine is entirely suited for the kind of action behind the lines once undertaken by surface raiders. Designed to slip obstacles that stop other ships, the submarine can attack either the enemy’s military force or his communications. The Germans showed us its value during the last war, though one need not imitate their excesses, their political mistakes, nor their failure to support their submarines with surface forces. The British offered us an example of the same sort in the Baltic. These two precedents have a strong link with the defensive problem because the use of the submarine in each case was the consequence of a surface inferiority that prevented a true offensive. Since this time, the launching of larger, more powerfully armed, and longer-ranged submarines capable of operating effectively against distant communications and of bombarding the enemy coastline has increased the submarine’s potential usefulness. The minor counterattack of the future will therefore be largely by submarine. . . .
Aviation, another new instrument, will give to the defense another particularly useful means of activity and aggression. Certainly, the defender will have to deal with the air power possessed by the enemy, who may be superior in the air as well as on the surface. He can have two advantages at once. But the air war has the special feature that the mastery acquired by the superior side is essentially local and temporary. It is very fleeting, much more so than is mastery of the sea, and the weaker side will not be impeded by the adversary’s manifestation of superiority from undertaking his own operations. Thus, whatever his relative strength, the defender can use his aircraft to execute minor counterattacks against the fleet, communications, bases, and ports of the enemy. This will be one of the strongest cards in his game. He will only be barred from the air in the case where the enemy is not only superior in forces but has the initiative of operations and is able to rule the skies uncontested.17 Aircraft not permanently attached to the navy can naturally cooperate in these counterattacks. One can call upon reinforcement from the army or the “air force” if the country has one.18
The defense will use mines to a great extent to reinforce his positions and to protect his coasts as well as to inflict losses upon the enemy and to force him to devote major resources to minesweeping. Mining can be done either by surface vessels or submarines.
One can see how these modern resources allow the defense to impart to his minor counterattacks a previously unrealizable vigor and how the psychological difference between offensive and defense has tended to diminish, at least superficially.19
The defender ought to be especially careful to avoid an excessive division of resources, the reef that usually sinks defensive systems. A frequent vice of the defender, dispersion, further compromises an already unhappy situation. Scattering his forces deprives the defender of the means to carry out fruitful counterattacks and of the reserves to create a local superiority through manoeuvre.
We have seen, however, proposals to distribute flotillas of destroyers and submarines along our coasts, thereby establishing the reign of local defense. At the same time, about 1880, the Americans distributed their monitors along their coastlines in a similarly impotent cordon. Today certain foreign thinkers favor an identical arrangement for air bases, although aviation’s great mobility suits it for concentration in a small number of well-positioned forts whence it can be rapidly shifted to the chosen point of manoeuvre.
The minor counteroffensive should not, any more than the true offensive, disperse its efforts in multiple directions if it wants to achieve results. It ought to concentrate them on a specific object or a specific region or even, if there is more than one adversary, on one of them alone—either the most important or the most vulnerable. The division of forces and selection of objectives may be even more important on the defensive than in other situations.
Moreover, today the defender profits from a previously unknown freedom of movement. Technological improvements have rendered military or commercial blockades much more open and much less effective than in the past, except in the case where, as with the Allies in 1914–1918, the blockader benefits from particularly advantageous geography. The blockaded can escape more easily and, once out, cannot be easily caught because he has a speed and variety of routes unknown in the days of sail. He may travel safely for a long time if the need to renew his fuel supply does not put an end to his roaming. If he has several bases at his disposal, the game gains increasing complexity and uncertainly.
Furthermore, the blockaded can pick his moment. The defender is not alone in choosing the moment of action, but let us say more accurately that the attacker does not have a monopoly on the initiative of operations and that the defender can exercise his own initiative. Here we find another major distinction between naval and land warfare. Fleet action depends on the volition of the party waiting in port and happens when and only when he elects it.20 This only complicates the blockader’s task, since he must be prepared at any moment for this event that he does not control. Although he cannot put off resupply, repairs, and careening indefinitely, he always worries about being caught in a position of numerical inferiority. The blockaded, however, need not attempt any adventure until his resources are at the maximum. During the last war, such calculations sometimes seriously disquieted the British in the North Sea and ourselves vis-à-vis the Austrians in the Adriatic.
Let us end this brief overview of the methods of defensive strategy by noting that they apply not only at the beginning of the war to the party that does not possess sufficient resources to adopt an offensive attitude but also to anyone whose adverse fortune during the course of the conflict reduces him to the defensive. In this case, he must continue to struggle with his remaining means—tenaciously, persistently, and energetically—until the moment when all resistance has become impossible and he is forced to lay down his arms.
What benefits can one expect to achieve from defensive operations? Materially, they will be minor. One will certainly hurt the enemy and inflict losses upon him; sometimes one will cause serious inconvenience, but the result will usually be far from upsetting his situation of preponderance.
One will “dispute” the mastery of the sea—obviously. But one can say more than that. There are disputes and disputes; the concept has degrees. There is the dispute between equals or semi-equals, when one does not reject or is unable to reject a decisive battle. This situation belongs to the offensive and has no defensive element. It is how command of the sea was disputed in Tourville’s day, during the War of American Independence, or, to a lesser degree, by Bruix in 1799, by Napoleon during the events leading up to Trafalgar, and by the Germans in the North Sea during the last war. This kind of dispute leaves or can leave the command of certain zones in suspense, giving them equally to the two adversaries with appropriate consequences for control of coasts and communications.
There is also the dispute between the weak and the strong, where the former works vainly through minor counterattacks and through combinations of questionable value to modify a position of very marked numerical inferiority. Examples are the campaigns against commerce of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War, and the Revolution; the guerrilla war after Trafalgar; the exploits of the Confederate raiders; and the German submarine war. In all cases like these, the dispute, even if energetically and intelligently handled, failed either to achieve the necessary freedom of surface communications or, in spite of the losses inflicted upon him, to deprive the enemy of them. One managed to inconvenience the enemy, sometimes seriously, but not to shake off his yoke and transform the situation. Such is the frequent fate of the naval defensive.
More complete and decisive results can only be attained by a true offensive, which must include a surface offensive. That is to say, that it must involve a battle of surface fleets, a battle that is beyond the means of the little partial offensives, limited and conditional, that characterize the surface operations of the defensive. Therein lies all of the difference between genuine offensives and minor counterattacks. The minor counterattacks are offensives of the second or third order; they are expedients. They only appear to reduce the gulf between the defensive and the offensive, but the real difference remains unchanged. The master of the surface, whose resources will suffice for the true offensive, retains every chance of having the final word.
Though it would be imprudent to base too much hope on the material returns of even the most active naval defensive, if properly conducted it can confer considerable benefits in the psychological sphere. Every purely defensive strategy risks undermining morale and incapacitating the defender for later action. As waiting ceases to be a brief suspension of activity and becomes a definitive posture, the defensive engenders over time an increasingly severe state of psychological decay. Extended periods of passivity create a paralysis that survives even material improvements that would allow decisive operations and causes forces to remain on the defensive even after their resources have become sufficient for action. . . .
The strategy of active defense has the great virtue of safeguarding morale by preserving the offensive spirit, the will to attack, the ardor of combat, and the initiative of operations to the extent material resources allow. Thanks above all to the new machines, the defender retains the ability to manoeuvre and need not fall into the torpor that traps those to whom all offensive action is forbidden. . . . If the material results are minor and certainly indecisive, the morale effects will be considerable both in the short run, in salvaging and reaffirming courage, and in the long run, because the gain in prestige and respect may have great consequences for the future. . . .
For example, we French still take pride in the actions of our corsairs of the past. They prove to us that we have in us the seeds of great achievements and that it remains only to exploit our potential through organization, material, and judicious conduct of operations. The foreigner, the old enemy in particular, knows as well as we that our guerre de course has always been impotent by itself to redress the balance in our favor.21 But although he weighs matters coldly and from a purely technical point of view, he cannot fail also to view with respect and sympathy the heroism that our ancestors evidenced in their struggle against destiny. He deduces from this that the Frenchman is a solid combatant, worthy of respect, and a valuable ally in time of need. Past valor, whether successful or not, enters into the political calculations of the present. Over the Anglo-French transactions that preceded the great shock of 1914, the shadows of Jean Bart22 and Surcouf23 still hovered.
Similarly, the German navy will live for a long time in its own imagination and others’ through the memory of events like Jutland, the cruise of the Emden, or the submarine war, however debatable they were from the strategic point of view.
Such is the undeniable advantage of active and aggressive defense. In spite of the material failures that history impartially records, future morale often arises from traces left in the soul by the minor counterattacks of the past. . . .24
1. Raoul Castex, Théories stratégiques, vol. 4 (Paris: Société d’Editions Géographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales, 1933): 137–66.
2. No proponent of the offense à l’outrance, French Fifth Army commander General Charles Louis Marie Lanrezac (1852–1925) was replaced in August 1914 for his pessimistic appraisal of the situation.
3. Britain itself has frequently had to follow this line of conduct because the great number and dispersion of her maritime interests implied the existence of so many vulnerable points (author’s note).
4. A parallel effort is required to provide antiaircraft defenses inland and along the coasts (author’s note).
5. Admiral Cloudesley Shovell (1659–1707).
6. Tourville had seventy ships of the line against Torrington’s fifty-seven, see E. H Jenkins, A History of the French Navy (London, 1973): 172.
7. For sources on the Battle of Beachy Head, see chapter 10.
8. Of Torrington’s initial refusal to give battle, Corbett says, “Nothing could be in closer harmony with the principles of good strategy as we understand them,” Corbett, Principles, 215. Corbett, its best known proponent, proposed that “the doctrine of the ‘fleet in being’ . . . goes no further than this, that where the enemy regards the general command of the sea as necessary to his offensive purposes, you may be able to prevent his gaining such command by using your fleet defensively, refusing what Nelson called a regular battle, and seizing every opportunity for a counterstroke,” Corbett, 224–25.
9. Admiral Philip Howard Colomb (1831–1899) published Naval Warfare (London, 1891), nearly simultaneously with Mahan’s Influence.
10. Mahan, Naval Strategy (1975): 267.
11. Castex, Théories, vol. 1, part 3, chapter 4 (author’s note).
12. Rear Admiral Richard Kempenfelt (1718–1782).
13. The events recalled below have already been studied from other points of view in Castex, Théories, vol. 1, part 3, chapters 1, 2, and 4 (author’s note). Pages 144–46 are omitted.
14. Clausewitz, On War, book 6, chapter 12 (Howard, 357).
15. Corbett, Principles, 227–32, directly links the notion of minor counterattacks to that of the “fleet in being.”
16. See chapter 6.
17. Airplanes and submarines will be employed against the enemy’s surface forces in order to alter the balance in the defender’s favor. Let us repeat that the enemy’s surface fleet remains the essential objective (author’s note).
18. In the latter case, one will have two negotiations to conduct instead of one. The navy’s role will be diminished and it will have to call upon the air force. Everything will be a combined operation. That is one of the beauties of this organization (author’s note). Compare below, 46, note 9.
19. Modern advances in communications do not violate the rule. The weaker party, though usually less well endowed with telegraph cables and bases, will make good use of radio (author’s note).
20. But experience shows that, in most cases, the blockaded, whether for lack of resources or low morale, is not very eager for adventure (author’s note).
21. For a more favorable appraisal of the French guerre de course, see Symcox.
22. Jean Bart (1657–1702) was the most famous French privateer of the War of the League of Augsburg.
23. The most successful French privateer of the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, Robert Surcouf (1773–1827) became a national hero for his successes in the Indian Ocean from 1796 to 1799; see Patrick Crowhurst, The French War on Trade: Privateering, 1793–1815 (Aldershot, Hants, England, 1984): 100.
24. Castex’s psychological argument parallels that of Clausewitz, On War, book 6, chapter 26 (Howard, 483). Pages 167–76 on the defense of coasts are omitted.