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To this end the college offers to all officers the advantages of a correspondence course, the extent of which is limited not by what the college can provide but by the average time which can be devoted to this work by officers occupied in the various duties ashore and afloat.

While we may reasonably hope for very appreciable results from this course, still there can be no doubt that we must depend largely upon graduates to illustrate by their example the principles and practices they have learned at the college.

Judging from my own experience, you will find your studies at the college of absorbing professional interest; and you may be sure that it shall be my object and that of the staff not only to facilitate your work in every practicable way, but also to render your stay here as agreeable as possible.

In the confident hope that we may succeed in both of these objects, I take great pleasure in welcoming you to the college.

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U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE, ANNAPOLIS, MD.

Prize Essay, 19171

COMMERCE DESTROYING IN WAR

By CAPTAIN LYMAN A. COTTEN, U. S. Navy
Motto: Easy methods; inconsiderable results

The science of war as we know it to-day, like all other sciences, is the result of progressive development. As war implements changed by successive stages from the clubs and stones of savagery to the high-power guns of to-day, the method of using these implements necessarily changed also, but the object of war has constantly remained the same, namely the reduction of one's opponent to such a state of impotence, actual or prospective, that he considers it the part of wisdom to submit to the will of his

enemy.

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Since war ceased to be a general mêlée in which one savage tribe fell upon another and fought by brute force until one was exterminated or enslaved, man has been more and more seeking to employ his brains as an aid in fighting. Many have reaped the advantage of more effective weapons or a more effective use of their weapons, but many more have striven in vain for a short cut to success in war-some patent nostrum by which victory could be won without taking and giving the hard blows that make war so disagreeable.

In the early ages of human development, sea-borne commerce was practically non-existent, but, so soon as civilization reached the era of colonization, it quickly became an important part of the economic life of the countries that faced the sea, and consequently of great importance in war.

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1 Essay received by U. S. Naval Institute, December 30, 1916. This essay was awarded the prize in 1917, and was through error published in a deleted form. It is now published in its entirety because a large and important portion of the essay was omitted in the June issue.

A merchant vessel on the high-seas is particularly helpless to resist force, and furthermore constitutes, with her cargo, a concentrated form of wealth. The sea offers no facilities for concealment, and the lanes of maritime commerce converge in certain localities on account of physical features, as islands, straits or smaller seas, making the location of merchant ships fairly simple. Seeing this, some seeker for success-in-war-without-fighting evolved the idea of commerce destroying as the long-sought short cut to easy, economical and successful war.

He argued in this way. We will build ships of less cost than heavy men-of-war, and send them out to prey upon this helpless maritime wealth of our enemy. These ships will infest the regions in which his merchant ships converge, and by capturing or destroying them we will bring him to the verge of bankruptcy, at the same time enriching ourselves at his expense. This reasoning seemed plausible, and this means of winning war on the sea appeared to be both simple and economical, and straightway there arose a school of adherents, both naval and civilian, though it must be said that it always appealed with more force to those who direct the conduct of war than to those who have to execute it. In any case, from that day to this, most maritime wars have seen commerce destroying used with varying degrees of insistence.

That great student of naval history Admiral Mahan said, "There are certain teachings in the school of history which remain constant," and it would seem to be not without interest to see what lessons the school of history contains on commerce destroying in war, with special attention to its final result and its association with victory or defeat. Such lessons should be of particular interest at this time when commerce destroying is being undertaken on an extensive scale and a new instrument, the submarine, is being employed in its service.

A survey of the history of commerce destroying will necessarily have to be very brief to be compassed in reasonable space, but even so, we may be able to deduce something therefrom of value to our country and of interest to ourselves. Such a survey may be divided logically into two parts, i. e., commerce destroying in former wars and commerce destroying in the present war. By handling the subject in this way we may more accurately gauge the present by the known results of the past, and after all such a

a survey can only have real value in just so far as it leads to a clearer understanding in the momentous present.

It is not necessary for our purpose that we go back in history for a further period than to enable us to cite sufficient examples upon which to base our deductions with reasonable safety. By the middle of the sixteenth century maritime commerce had risen to a position of great economic importance in the national lives of several European countries, particularly Spain. Her galleons usually voyaged several together, the better to defend themselves from the pirates and freebooters of that day, and on their homeward voyages were laden with cargoes of great value.

When England under Elizabeth and Spain under Philip went to war, partly for "the glory of God," and partly for the privilege of trade with America, the Spanish Navy was at the height of its glory, while the English Navy had yet to win its distinction, and to become imbued with those correct principles of naval warfare that for so long have maintained England in her world position. At this time England was a comparatively poor country, and first-line men-of-war were expensive, so for some years she made direct war on the commerce of Spain her chief objective, at the same time pillaging and destroying her colonial cities as occasion permitted.

At first this mode of warfare seemed to meet with considerable success, but, none-the-less, when Philip began building and fitting out a vast number of fighting ships, England found herself threatened with invasion, which commerce destroying was powerless to stop. Though Drake covered himself with glory when he "singed the King of Spain's beard for him" at Cadiz, the preparations for invasion were only delayed, not stopped.

After much delay through vacillation and economy, the English began to prepare a fighting fleet, and finally were able, though vastly outnumbered, to "defy the Duke Medina " and scatter to the winds the Great Armada.

Then it was that the English found that in saving England from invasion by destroying the Spanish war-fleet, they had also greatly simplified the problem of trade with America, and had put the commerce of Spain almost at their mercy.

For fifty years or more after this, England put her reliance in maritime war in her fighting fleet, but plausible fallacies die hard, and in the second Anglo-Dutch war the English showed they had

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