mistake was that we suffered the enemy's battle-fleets to get upon and
occupy the vital lines of "passage and communication" without first
bringing them to action, an error partly due to the unreadiness of a weak
administration, and partly to an insufficient allocation of cruisers to
secure contact at the right places.

So far, then, the principles on which our naval supremacy was built up are
clear. For the enemies with whom we had to deal Anson's system was
admirably conceived. Both Spain and France held the communication theory so
strongly, that they were content to count as success the power of
continually disturbing our control without any real attempt to secure it
for themselves. To defeat such a policy Anson's constitution and the
strategy it connoted were thoroughly well adapted and easy to work. But it
by no means follows that his doctrine is the last word. Even in his own
time complications had begun to develop which tended to confuse the
precision of his system. By the culminating year of Trafalgar there were
indications that it was getting worn out, while the new methods and
material used by the Americans in 1812 made a serious rent in it. The
disturbances then inaugurated have continued to develop, and it is
necessary to consider how seriously they have confused the problem of fleet
constitution.

Firstly, there is the general recognition, always patent to ourselves, that
by far the most drastic, economical, and effective way of securing control
is to destroy the enemy's means of interfering with it. In our own service
this "overthrow" idea always tended to assert itself so strongly, that
occasionally the means became for a time more important than the end; that
is to say, circumstances were such that on occasions it was considered
advisable to sacrifice the exercise of control for a time in order quickly
and permanently to deprive the enemy of all means of interference. When