At sea, the reverse is frequently the case; for in maritime warfare the great lines of communications of either belligerent often tend to run approximately parallel if, indeed, they are not identical.
Thus, in the case of a war with Germany, the object of which lay in the Eastern Mediterranean, or in America, or South Africa, our respective lines of communication would be identical.
This was also the case in all our imperial wars with France.
_This peculiarity is the controlling influence of maritime warfare._ Nearly all our current maxims of Naval Strategy can be traced to the pressure it exerts on naval thought.
It is at the root of the fundamental difference between Military and Naval Strategy, and affords the explanation of much strategical error and confusion which have arisen from applying the principles of land warfare to the sea without allowing for the antagonistic conditions of the communications and the operations against them in each case.
On land, the chief reason for not always striking the enemy's communications at once is that, as a rule, we cannot do so without exposing our own. At sea, on the contrary, when the great lines are common to both, we cannot defend our own without striking at the enemy's.
Therefore, at sea, the obvious opening is to get our fleet into such a position that it controls the common lines, unless defeated or evaded. This was usually done in our old wars with France, by our attempting to get a fleet off Brest before the French could sail.
Hence the maxims "That the proper place for our fleets is off the enemy's coast," "The enemy's coast is our true frontier," and the like.
But these maxims are not universally true; witness Togo's strategy against Rojesvensky, when he remained correctly upon his own coast.
Take, again, the maxim that the primary object of the fleet is to seek out the enemy's fleet and destroy it. Here, again, Togo's practice was the reverse of the maxim.
The true maxim is "The primary object of the fleet is to secure communications, and if the enemy's fleet is in a position to render them unsafe it must be put out of action."
The enemy's fleet usually is in this position, but not always.
EXAMPLE.--Opening of the War of the Spanish Succession. The operations of 1702 were to secure some point (Cadiz, Gibraltar, or Ferrol) on the Spanish trade communications, the French lateral communications, and our own lines of passage to the Mediterranean, where was to be our chief theatre of operation. These last two lines were identical. In 1703, the chief operations had for their object to secure the alliance of Savoy, and particularly of Portugal. Rooke's official instructions directed that the French fleet was to be ignored unless it threatened the common communications.