iate scenes of war. However this may be on shore, a
recent French author is quite right in pointing out that such a
definition is too narrow for naval strategy. "This," he says, "differs
from military strategy in that it is as necessary in peace as in war.
Indeed, in peace it may gain its most decisive victories by occupying
in a country, either by purchase or treaty, excellent positions which
would perhaps hardly be got by war. It learns to profit by all
opportunities of settling on some chosen point of a coast, and to
render definitive an occupation which at first was only transient." A
generation that has seen England within ten years occupy successively
Cyprus and Egypt, under terms and conditions on their face transient,
but which have not yet led to the abandonment of the positions taken,
can readily agree with this remark; which indeed receives constant
illustration from the quiet persistency with which all the great sea
powers are seeking position after position, less noted and less
noteworthy than Cyprus and Egypt, in the different seas to which their
people and their ships penetrate. "Naval strategy has indeed for its
end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the
sea power of a country;" and therefore its study has an interest and
value for all citizens of a free country, but especially for those who
are charged with its foreign and military relations.

The general conditions that either are essential to or powerfully
affect the greatness of a nation upon the sea will now be examined;
after which a more particular consideration of the various maritime
nations of Europe at the middle of the seventeenth century, where the
historical survey begins, will serve at once to illustrate and give
precision to the conclusions upon the general subject.

* * * * *

NOTE.--The brilliancy of Nelson's fame, dimming as it does that
of all his contemporaries, and the implicit trust felt by
England in him as the one man able to save her from the schemes
of Napoleon, should not of course obscure the fact that only one
portion of the field was, or could be, occupied by him.
Napoleon's aim, in the campaign which ended at Trafalgar, was to
unite in the West Indies the French fleets of Brest, Toulon, and
Rochefort, together with a strong body of Spanish ships, thus
forming an overwhelming force which he intended should return
together to