Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/158

134 induce a losing action which otherwise would not be attempted. In other words, this means that the course of affairs may be governed by the conditions of the bases of the other side and the ease with which damage can be done to them. A realisation of this fact gives bases an added importance.

Bases—not fleets—will surely eventually be the aim of all naval warfare, a truth all will incline to admit in principle even now, though few may clearly recognise it in detail. To destroy a base is worth far more risk and far more loss than to defeat a fleet, which, like the Russians at Port Arthur between February and August 1904, may retreat to the base for repair and then come out again. That base attacks are always the ultimate end of a guerre de course is generally ignored by those who affect to despise, the jeune école.

France is the home of guerre de course theories, and her naval policy is always tinted by these theories. Hence the long adherence to coast-defence battleships which are small and cheap, little able to engage big sea-going battleships, but eminently fitted for longrange bombardments and coast operations generally. In the Siegfried class Germany imitated these ships without embodying or perhaps understanding their raison d'etre; for the German coast-defenders have short-range guns.

The objection to coast-defence ships is that their range and utility are limited, and that they are relatively