These features of the enterprise should be noted.  They differentiate it from our earlier use of war limited by contingent in the continental manner, of which Marlborough’s campaigns were typical, and they exhibit the special form which Marlborough would have chosen had political exigencies permitted and which was to become characteristic of British effort from Pitt’s time onward.  In the method of our greatest War Minister we have not only the limit by contingent but also the limit of a definite and independent function, and finally we have touch with the sea.  This is the really vital factor, and upon it, as will presently appear, depends the strength of the method.

In the earlier part of the Great War we employed the same form in our operations in North-Western Europe.  There we had also the limited function of securing Holland, and also complete touch with the sea, but our theatre of operations was not independent.  Intimate concerted action with other forces was involved, and the result in every case was failure.  Later on in Sicily, where absolute isolation was attainable, the strength of the method enabled us to achieve a lasting result with very slender means.  But the result was purely defensive.  It was not till the Peninsular War developed that we found a theatre for war limited by contingent in which all the conditions that make for success were present.  Even there so long as our army was regarded as a contingent auxiliary to the Spanish army the usual failure ensued.  Only in Portugal, the defence of which was a true limited object, and where we had a sea-girt theatre independent of extraneous allies, was success achieved from the first.  So strong was the method here, and so exhausting the method which it forced on the enemy, that the local balance of force was eventually reversed and we were able to pass to a drastic offensive.

The real secret of Wellington’s success—­apart from his own genius—­was that in perfect conditions he was applying the limited form to an unlimited war.  Our object was unlimited.  It was nothing less than the overthrow of Napoleon.  Complete success at sea had failed to do it, but that success had given us the power of applying the limited form, which was the most decisive form of offence within our means.  Its substantial contribution to the final achievement of the object is now universally recognised.

The general result, then, of these considerations is that war by contingent in the continental form seldom or never differs generically from unlimited war, for the conditions required by limited war are seldom or never present.  But what may be called the British or maritime form is in fact the application of the limited method to the unlimited form, as ancillary to the larger operations of our allies—­a method which has usually been open to us because the control of the sea has enabled us to select a theatre in effect truly limited.[5]