So the first duty
of any navy is to keep the seaways open for friends and closed to
enemies. And this is even more the duty of the British Navy than of
any other navy. For the sea lies between all the different parts of
the British Empire; and so the life-or-death question we have to answer
in every great war is this: does the sea unite us by being under
British control, or does it divide us by being under enemy control?
United we stand: divided we fall.
At first sight you would never believe that sea-power could be lost or
won as well by birchbarks as by battleships. But if both sides have
the same sort of craft, or one side has none at all, then it does not
matter what the sort is. When the Iroquois paddled their birch-bark
canoes past Quebec in 1660, and defied the French Governor to stop
them, they "commanded" the St. Lawrence just as well as the British
Grand Fleet commanded the North Sea in the Great War; and for the same
reason, because their enemy was not strong enough to stop them.
Whichever army can drive its enemy off the roads must win the war,
because it can get what it wants from its base, (that is, from the
places where its supplies of men and arms and food and every other need
are kept); while its enemy will have to go without, being unable to get
anything like enough, by bad and roundabout ways, to keep up the fight
against men who can use the good straight roads.
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