nobody's comfort, happiness, or safety shall receive the slightest
consideration; that everybody's strength and courage must be worked
to the limit by night as well as by day, and that there must be
no rest and no yielding to any softening influence whatever; that
the whole strength and mind of the nation, and of every individual
in it, must be devoted, and must be sacrificed, if need be, to
the cause at stake.

In war, a navy's primary duty has usually been to protect the coast
and trade routes of its country; and in order to do this, it has had
to be able to oppose to an attacking fleet a defending fleet more
militarily effective. If it were less effective, even if no invasion
were attempted, the attacking fleet could cripple or destroy the
defending fleet and then institute a blockade. In modern times an
effective blockade, or at least a hostile patrol of trade routes,
could be held hundreds of miles from the coast, where the menace
of submarines would be negligible; and this blockade would stop
practically all import and export trade. This would compel the
country to live exclusively on its own resources, and renounce
intercourse with the outside world. Some countries could exist
a long time under these conditions. But they would exist merely,
and the condition of mere existence would never end until they
sued for peace; because, even if new warships were constructed
with which to beat off the enemy, each new and untrained ship would
be sunk or captured shortly after putting out to sea as, on June
1, 1813, in Massachusetts Bay, the American frigate _Chesapeake_
was captured and nearly half her crew were killed and wounded in
fifteen minutes by a ship almost identical in the material qualities
of size and armament--the better-trained British frigate _Shannon_.