ve sprung up.
From these considerations a very important conclusion must be drawn. In
the first place, enough victory at sea is in case of war as
indispensable to Great Britain as ever, for it remains the fundamental
condition of her security, yet its results can hardly in future be as
great as they were in the past, and in particular it may perhaps not
again enable her to exert upon continental States the same effective
pressure which it formerly rendered possible.
In order, therefore, to bring pressure upon a continental adversary,
Great Britain is more than ever in need of the co-operation of a
continental ally. A navy alone cannot produce the effect which it once
did upon the course of a land war, and its success will not suffice to
give confidence to the ally. Nothing but an army able to take its part
in a continental struggle will, in modern conditions, suffice to make
Great Britain the effective ally of a continental State, and in the
absence of such an army Great Britain will continue to be, as she is
to-day, without continental allies.
A second conclusion is that our people, while straining every nerve in
peace to ensure to their navy the best chances of victory in war, must
carefully avoid the conception of a dominion of the sea, although, in
fact, such a dominion actually existed during a great part of the
nineteenth century. The new conditions which have grown up during the
past thirty years have made this ideal as much a thing of the past as
the mediaeval conception of a Roman Empire in Europe to whose titular
head all kings were subordinate.
X.
DYNAMICS--THE QUESTION OF MIGHT
If there is a chance of a conflict in which Great Britain is to be
engaged, her people must take thought in time how they may have on their
side both right and might. It is hard to see how otherwise they can
expect the contest to be decided in their favour.
As I have said before, in the quarrel you must be in the right and in
the fight you must win. The quarrel is the domain of policy, the fight
that of strategy or dynamics. Policy and strategy are in reality
inextricably interwoven one with another, for right and might resemble,
more than is commonly supposed, two aspects of the same thing. But it is
convenient in the attempt to understand any complicated subject to
examine its aspects separately.
I propose, therefore, in considering the present situation of Great
Britain and her relations to the rest of the
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