In several great wars in Europe waged since France and England made peace with Russia sea-power manifested itself but little.  In the Russo-Turkish war the great naval superiority of the Turks in the Black Sea, where the Russians at the time had no fleet, governed the plans, if not the course, of the campaigns.  The water being denied to them, the Russians were compelled to execute their plan of invading Turkey by land.  An advance to the Bosphorus through the northern part of Asia Minor was impracticable without help from a navy on the right flank.  Consequently the only route was a land one across the Danube and the Balkans.  The advantages, though not fully utilised, which the enforcement of this line of advance put into the hands of the Turks, and the difficulties and losses which it caused the Russians, exhibited in a striking manner what sea-power can effect even when its operation is scarcely observable.

This was more conspicuous in a later series of hostilities.  The civil war in Chili between Congressists and Balmacedists is specially interesting, because it throws into sharp relief the predominant influence, when a non-maritime enemy is to be attacked, of a navy followed up by an adequate land-force.  At the beginning of the dispute the Balmacedists, or President’s party, had practically all the army, and the Congressists, or Opposition party, nearly all the Chilian navy.  Unable to remain in the principal province of the republic, and expelled from the waters of Valparaiso by the Balmacedist garrisons of the forts—­the only and doubtful service which those works rendered to their own side—­the Congressists went off with the ships to the northern provinces, where they counted many adherents.  There they formed an army, and having money at command, and open sea communications, they were able to import equipment from abroad, and eventually to transport their land-force, secured from molestation on the voyage by the sea-power at their disposal, to the neighbourhood of Valparaiso, where it was landed and triumphantly ended the campaign.

It will have been noticed that, in its main outlines, this story repeated that of many earlier campaigns.  It was itself repeated, as regards its general features, by the story of the war between China and Japan in 1894-95.  ‘Every aspect of the war,’ says Colomb, ’is interesting to this country, as Japan is to China in a position similar to that which the British Islands occupy to the European continent.’[48] It was additionally interesting because the sea-power of Japan was a novelty.  Though a novelty, it was well known by English naval men to be superior in all essentials to that of China, a novelty itself.  As is the rule when two belligerents are contending for something beyond a purely maritime object, the final decision was to be on land.  Korea was the principal theatre of the land war; and, as far as access to it by sea was concerned, the chief bases of the two sides were about the same distance from