bred a belief that where the object of the war plainly depended on winning a real command of the sea, that object could yet be attained by naval defensive operations.  Many times it is true a policy which had starved the navy of France left no other course open to her seamen, and had they in their inferiority attempted the offensive, the end must have been swifter if not more certain.  In criticising the maritime history of France we must be careful to distinguish policy from strategy.  It was not always the defensive strategy that was bad, but the policy that condemned her admirals to negative operations.  Seeing that she was a continental Power with continental aspirations, it was often a policy from which her military exigencies permitted no escape.  Nevertheless the policy was twice accursed:  it cursed her when she was weak, and cursed her when she was strong.  The prolonged use of the defensive bred a habit of mind which seems to have rendered her incapable of striking hard when she had the strength.  In no other way at least can we account for the behaviour of so high-spirited a nation when her chance of revenge came in the War of American Independence.

It is here in its moral reactions lies the danger of the defensive, a danger so insidious in its working as to tempt us never to utter the word.  Yet with the voice of Torrington, Kempenfelt, and Nelson in our ears, it would be folly to ignore it for ourselves, and still more to ignore the exhausting strain its use by our enemy may impose upon us.  It must be studied, if for no other reasons than to learn how to break it down.  Nor will the study have danger, if only we keep well in view the spirit of restless and vigilant counter-attack which Kempenfelt and Nelson regarded as its essence.  True, some of the conditions which in the days of sails made for opportunity have passed away, but many still remain.  Shifts of wind and calms will no longer bring them, but weather thick or violent can yet make seamanship, nimbleness, and cohesion tell as it always did; and there is no reason to doubt that it is still possible for hard sea-training to make “the activity and spirit of our officers and seamen” give the results which Nelson so confidently expected.

II.  MINOR COUNTER-ATTACKS

For the weaker of two belligerents minor-attack has always exercised a certain fascination.  Where a Power was so inferior in naval force that it could scarcely count even on disputing command by fleet operations, there remained a hope of reducing the relative inferiority by putting part of the enemy’s force out of action.  Such hopes were rarely realised.  In 1587 Drake succeeded in stopping the Spanish invasion by such a counter-attack on the Cadiz division of the Armada while it was still unmobilised.  In 1667 the Dutch achieved a similar success against our Chatham division when it was demobilised and undefended, and thereby probably secured rather more favourable terms of peace.  But it cannot be said that the old wars present any case where the ultimate question of command was seriously affected by a minor counterattack.