THE USE OF SEA POWER
Sut,—The most important thing about the sea is the cargoes in the ships on its surface. Sea Power is the power to control the destination of cargoes. Sea Power is eventually decisive in war, because war is a matter of cargoes. Wars are lost for want of cargoes. Lack of cargoes made Russia quarrel with Napoleon, the loss of whose Grand Army there foreshadowed his fall. Lack of cargoes beat the South in the American Civil War. Lack of cargoes crashed the Kaiser's war-machine into revolution. Lack of iron-ore cargoes drove Hitler's soldiers into Denmark to secure his rout.: to the Norwegian iron-ore, Denmark's consequent lack of cargoes of fodder and fertilisers will reduce Danish food pro- duction for Germany. Lack of cargoes of all kinds has now driven Hitler to go for Dutch and Belgian ports, from which, and from Calais if he can take it, to try to break our cargo blockade; forgetting that it is not ports or bases. but warships at sea that dominate seas, and dominate the ports on the seas by capturing cargoes going to the ports.
If every British soldier were driven out of or withdrawn from Europe. and it was all in the hands of our enemies; our real war would then begin, on our true element, the sea, which, in the nature of things, can always beat the land. Blockading the whole of Europe, including Russia and the Mediterranean, would be actually easier than blockading part of Europe with neutral leak- ages. Cut off Europe from tropical and world cargoes at Suez, Gibraltar, Dover and the Scotland-Norway gap, and Europe can- not fight for long. Meanwhile we could increase our own tropical and world trade. With comparatively little killing, and by using fully the control our Sea Power gives us over cargoes, England can outlast and beat any enemy or combination of enemies.—
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