avoided on land. The defensive, then, has to be considered; but before we
are in a position to do so with profit, we have to proceed with our
analysis of the phrase, "Command of the Sea," and ascertain exactly what it
is we mean by it in war.

In the first place, "Command of the Sea" is not identical in its
strategical conditions with the conquest of territory. You cannot argue
from the one to the other, as has been too commonly done. Such phrases as
the "Conquest of water territory" and "Making the enemy's coast our
frontier" had their use and meaning in the mouths of those who framed them,
but they are really little but rhetorical expressions founded on false
analogy, and false analogy is not a secure basis for a theory of war.

The analogy is false for two reasons, both of which enter materially into
the conduct of naval war. You cannot conquer sea because it is not
susceptible of ownership, at least outside territorial waters. You cannot,
as lawyers say, "reduce it into possession," because you cannot exclude
neutrals from it as you can from territory you conquer. In the second
place, you cannot subsist your armed force upon it as you can upon enemy's
territory. Clearly, then, to make deductions from an assumption that
command of the sea is analogous to conquest of territory is unscientific,
and certain to lead to error.

The only safe method is to inquire what it is we can secure for ourselves,
and what it is we can deny the enemy by command of the sea. Now, if we
exclude fishery rights, which are irrelevant to the present matter, the
only right we or our enemy can have on the sea is the right of passage; in
other words, the only positive value which the high seas have for national
life is as a means of communication. For the active life of a nation such
means may stand for much or it may stand for little, but to every maritime