sufficiently old to be found in Gibbon, or for that matter even so long ago as Thucydides, that a power controlling the sea in a war in which both land and sea are concerned will control the land. More briefly it may be put, 'Who rules the sea rules the world.'
A prime object of this work is to examine this theory as applied to history, questioning whether it may be accepted as a certain rule without limitations.
The second general conception is that Sea Power is embodied in a navy of tried skill, power, and general efficiency by means of which the certainty of victory is to be assured; and so a second purpose of this book is to show why doubts are permissible as to whether this may be accepted as a principle.
At the present time, chiefly through gradual growth and the natural desire of all to make a plausible theory square with facts, both the above conceptions are accepted by the majority of people as dogmas. It is proposed to show in these pages that, although the dogmas may in a great number of cases lead no one astray, yet that there is in them just sufficient alloy to make trust in them undesirable, and that Sea Power has more often been the means to rather than the cause of victory. On the other hand, once we attempt to find it, one eternal principle will be found a characteristic of every war that has ever been, and that characteristic is the one which is in these pages described as 'Fitness to Win.' Neither Sea Power nor anything else is a substitute for this.
