o frequently to our serious annoyance
and loss. In the Seven Years' War, for instance, the French by avoiding
offensive operations likely to lead to a decision, and confining themselves
to active defence, were able for five campaigns to prevent our reducing
Canada, which was the object of the war. Had they staked the issue on a
great fleet action in the first campaign, and had the result been against
them, we could certainly have achieved our object in half the time. In the
end, of course, they failed to prevent the conquest, but during all the
time the catastrophe was postponed France had abundant opportunity of
gaining offensively elsewhere territory which, as she at all events
believed, would have compelled us to give up our conquest at the peace.

Again, in our last great naval war Napoleon by avoiding general actions was
able to keep the command in dispute till by alliances and otherwise he had
gathered force which he deemed sufficient to warrant a return to the
offensive. Eventually that force proved unequal to the task, yet when it
failed and the command passed to his enemy, he had had time to consolidate
his power so far that the loss of his fleet seemed scarcely to affect it,
and for nine years more he was able to continue the struggle.

Such examples--and there are many of them--serve to show how serious a
matter is naval defence in the hands of a great military Power with other
means of offence. They tell us how difficult it is to deal with, and how
serious therefore for even the strongest naval Power is the need to give it
careful study.

And not for this reason only, but also because the strongest naval Power,
if faced with a coalition, may find it impossible to exert a drastic
offensive anywhere without temporarily reducing its force in certain areas
to a point relatively so low as to permit of nothing higher than the
defensive. The leading case of such a state of affairs, which we must
further consider presently, was our own position in the War of American
Independence, when, as we have seen, in order to secure an adequate
concentration for offence in the West Indies we were forced to reduce our
home fleet to defensive level.

What, then, do we mean by naval defence? To arrive at a right answer we
must first clear our mind of all confusing shadows cast by the accidents of
land defence. Both on land and at sea defence means of course taking
certain measures to defer a decision until military or political