It is generally held that modern developments in military organisation and transport will enable a great continental Power to ignore such threats.  Napoleon ignored them in the past, but only to verify the truth that in war to ignore a threat is too often to create an opportunity.  Such opportunities may occur late or early.  As both Lord Ligonier and Wolfe laid it down for such operations, surprise is not necessarily to be looked for at the beginning.  We have usually had to create or wait for our opportunity—­too often because we were either not ready or not bold enough to seize the first that occurred.

The cases in which such intervention has been most potent have been of two classes.  Firstly, there is the intrusion into a war plan which our enemy has designed without allowing for our intervention, and to which he is irrevocably committed by his opening movements.  Secondly, there is intervention to deprive the enemy of the fruits of victory.  This form finds its efficacy in the principle that unlimited wars are not always decided by the destruction of armies.  There usually remains the difficult work of conquering the people afterwards with an exhausted army.  The intrusion of a small fresh force from the sea in such cases may suffice to turn the scale, as it did in the Peninsula, and as, in the opinion of some high authorities, it might have done in France in 1871.

Such a suggestion will appear to be almost heretical as sinning against the principle which condemns a strategical reserve.  We say that the whole available force should be developed for the vital period of the struggle.  No one can be found to dispute it nowadays.  It is too obviously true when it is a question of a conflict between organised forces, but in the absence of all proof we are entitled to doubt whether it is true for that exhausting and demoralising period which lies beyond the shock of armies.

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CHAPTER SIX

CONDITIONS OF STRENGTH IN LIMITED WAR

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The elements of strength in limited war are closely analogous to those generally inherent in defence.  That is to say, that as a correct use of defence will sometimes enable an inferior force to gain its end against a superior one, so are there instances in which the correct use of the limited form of war has enabled a weak military Power to attain success against a much stronger one, and these instances are too numerous to permit us to regard the results as accidental.

An obvious element of strength is that where the geographical conditions are favourable we are able by the use of our navy to restrict the amount of force our army will have to deal with.  We can in fact bring up our fleet to redress the adverse balance of our land force.  But apart from this very practical reason there is another, which is rooted in the first principles of strategy.