f enumeration of the more
striking instances will make it plain that the events in question
have been confined to no particular age and to no particular
country.

It may be said that the more elaborately organised and trained
in peace time an armed force happened to be, the more unexpected
always, and generally the more disastrous, was its downfall.
Examples of this are to be found in the earliest campaigns of
which we have anything like detailed accounts, and they continue
to reappear down to very recent times. In the elaborate nature
of its organisation and training there probably never has been
an army surpassing that led by Xerxes into Greece twenty-four
centuries ago. Something like eight years had been devoted to
its preparation. The minute account of its review by Xerxes on
the shores of the Hellespont proves that, however inefficient
the semi-civilised contingents accompanying it may have been,
the regular Persian army appeared, in discipline, equipment,
and drill, to have come up to the highest standard of the most
intense 'pipeclay' epoch. In numbers alone its superiority was
considerable to the last, and down to the very eve of Plataea its
commander openly displayed his contempt for his enemy. Yet no
defeat could be more complete than that suffered by the Persians
at the hands of their despised antagonists.

As if to establish beyond dispute the identity of governing
conditions in both land and maritime wars, the next very conspicuous
disappointment of an elaborately organised force was that of the
Athenian fleet at Syracuse. At the time Athens, without question,
stood at the head of the naval world: her empire was in the truest
sense the product of sea-power. Her navy, whilst unequalled in size,
might claim, without excessive exaggeration, to be invincible. The
great armament which the Athenians despatched to Sicily seemed, in
numbers alone, capable of triumphing over all resistance. If the
Athenian navy had already met with some explicable mishaps, it
looked back with complacent confidence on the glorious achievements
of more than half a century previously. It had enjoyed many years
of what was so nearly a maritime peace that its principal exploits
had been the subjection of states weak to insignificance on the
sea as compared with imperial Athens. Profuse expenditure on its
maintenance; the 'continued practice' of which Pericles boasted,
the peace manoeuvres of a remote past; skilfully designed equipme