impressions should always be thoroughly
tested; for if erroneous they work sure failure, and perhaps disaster.

There was such an impression largely held by French officers of that
day, and yet more widely spread in the United States now, of the
efficacy of commerce-destroying as a main reliance in war, especially
when directed against a commercial country like Great Britain. "The
surest means in my opinion," wrote a distinguished officer,
Lamotte-Picquet, "to conquer the English is to attack them in their
commerce." The harassment and distress caused to a country by serious
interference with its commerce will be conceded by all. It is
doubtless a most important secondary operation of naval war, and is
not likely to be abandoned till war itself shall cease; but regarded
as a primary and fundamental measure, sufficient in itself to crush an
enemy, it is probably a delusion, and a most dangerous delusion, when
presented in the fascinating garb of cheapness to the representatives
of a people. Especially is it misleading when the nation against whom
it is to be directed possesses, as Great Britain did and does, the two
requisites of a strong sea power,--a wide-spread healthy commerce and
a powerful navy. Where the revenues and industries of a country can be
concentrated into a few treasure-ships, like the flota of Spanish
galleons, the sinew of war may perhaps be cut by a stroke; but when
its wealth is scattered in thousands of going and coming ships, when
the roots of the system spread wide and far, and strike deep, it can
stand many a cruel shock and lose many a goodly bough without the life
being touched. Only by military command of the sea by prolonged
control of the strategic centres of commerce, can such an attack be
fatal;[245] and such control can be wrung from a powerful navy only
by fighting and overcoming it. For two hundred years England has been
the great commercial nation of the world. More than any other her
wealth has been intrusted to the sea in war as in peace; yet of all
nations she has ever been most reluctant to concede the immunities of
commerce and the rights of neutrals. Regarded not as a matter of
right, but of policy, history has justified the refusal; and if she
maintain her navy in full strength, the future will doubtless repeat
the lesson of the past.

* * * * *

The preliminaries of the peace between Great Britain and the allied
courts, which brought to an end