ns of greater or less importance, to which due attention should
have been paid.

Assuming that the navies, as the guardians of the communications, were
the controlling factors in the war, and that the source, both of the
navies and of those streams of supplies which are called
communications, was in the mother-countries, and there centralized in
the chief arsenals, two things follow: First, the main effort of the
Power standing on the defensive, of Great Britain, should have been
concentrated before those arsenals; and secondly, in order to such
concentration, the lines of communication abroad should not have been
needlessly extended, so as to increase beyond the strictest necessity
the detachments to guard them. Closely connected with the last
consideration is the duty of strengthening, by fortification and
otherwise, the vital points to which the communications led, so that
these points should not depend in any way upon the fleet for
protection, but only for supplies and reinforcements, and those at
reasonable intervals. Gibraltar, for instance, quite fulfilled these
conditions, being practically impregnable, and storing supplies that
lasted very long.

If this reasoning be correct, the English dispositions on the American
continent were very faulty. Holding Canada, with Halifax, New York,
and Narragansett Bay, and with the line of the Hudson within their
grip, it was in their power to isolate a large, perhaps decisive, part
of the insurgent territory. New York and Narragansett Bay could have
been made unassailable by a French fleet of that day, thus assuring
the safety of the garrisons against attacks from the sea and
minimizing the task of the navy; while the latter would find in them a
secure refuge, in case an enemy's force eluded the watch of the
English fleet before a European arsenal and appeared on the coast.
Instead of this, these two ports were left weak, and would have fallen
before a Nelson or a Farragut, while the army in New York was twice
divided, first to the Chesapeake and afterward to Georgia, neither
part of the separated forces being strong enough for the work before
it. The control of the sea was thus used in both cases to put the
enemy between the divided portions of the English army, when the
latter, undivided, had not been able to force its way over the ground
thus interposed. As the communication between the two parts of the
army depended wholly upon the sea, the duty of the navy was increas