such science and
vigor as would frustrate the designs of the enemy, by getting first to
sea, taking positions skilfully, anticipating their combinations by
greater quickness of movement, harassing their communications with
their objectives, and meeting the principal divisions of the enemy
with superior forces.

It is sufficiently clear that the maintenance of this war, everywhere
except on the American continent, depended upon the mother-countries
in Europe and upon open communication with them. The ultimate crushing
of the Americans, too, not by direct military effort but by
exhaustion, was probable, if England were left unmolested to strangle
their commerce and industries with her overwhelming naval strength.
This strength she could put forth against them, if relieved from the
pressure of the allied navies; and relief would be obtained if she
could gain over them a decided preponderance, not merely material but
moral, such as she had twenty years later. In that case the allied
courts, whose financial weakness was well known, must retire from a
contest in which their main purpose of reducing England to an inferior
position was already defeated. Such preponderance, however, could only
be had by fighting; by showing that, despite inferiority in numbers,
the skill of her seamen and the resources of her wealth enabled her
government, by a wise use of these powers, to be actually superior at
the decisive points of the war. It could never be had by distributing
the ships-of-the-line all over the world, exposing them to be beaten
in detail while endeavoring to protect all the exposed points of the
scattered empire.

The key of the situation was in Europe, and in Europe in the hostile
dock-yards. If England were unable, as she proved to be, to raise up a
continental war against France, then her one hope was to find and
strike down the enemy's navy. Nowhere was it so certainly to be found
as in its home ports; nowhere so easily met as immediately after
leaving them. This dictated her policy in the Napoleonic wars, when
the moral superiority of her navy was so established that she dared to
oppose inferior forces to the combined dangers of the sea and of the
more numerous and well-equipped ships lying quietly at anchor inside.
By facing this double risk she obtained the double advantage of
keeping the enemy under her eyes, and of sapping his efficiency by the
easy life of port, while her own officers and seamen were hardened by