Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/151

Rh The extremists, perhaps, would argue that provided the fleet is intact and victorious, no serious attack on a main base is to be expected or indeed possible; and it is difficult to argue that this is untrue. To those who contend that 'the fleet might suffer a reverse,' the extremists reply 'All the more reason why money should be spent entirely on ships and not be devoted to bricks and mortar. Build enough ships, and your contemplated reverse cannot occur.'

Undoubtedly there is a very great deal in this argument, and it might be accepted as conclusive were it not that base attack is likely to be recognised sooner or later as the main objective of naval warfare, and to leave bases open to attack would court such a state of affairs. If the base be weak then a fleet must be tied to it to protect it, and so the extreme opponents of 'bricks and mortar' would, were they given rein, probably defeat their own ends.

Long custom, rather than logical reasoning, has created a system of first-class bases, secondary bases and so on down to minor bases of the fifteenth rank or thereabouts protected by a couple of six-inch guns 'to keep off a hostile cruiser.' How or why the hostile cruiser should come to such a place as—for instance—Lough Swilly, in order to test the six inch-guns, and what harm the guns would do to a modern armoured cruiser are questions that have not apparently entered into the scheme of things to any extent. Custom has decreed that 'moderate fortifications' should exist at