Alfred Thayer Mahan

It is only when effort is frittered away in the feeble dissemination of the guerre-de-course, instead of being concentrated in a great combination to control the sea, that commerce-destroying justly incurs the reproach of misdirected effort. It is a fair deduction from analogy, that two contending armies might as well agree to respect each other's communications, as two belligerent states to guarantee immunity to hostile commerce.