tached up the Channel from the allied fleet they would surely,
according to tradition, have followed it with either a superior force or
their whole squadron.

The well-known projects of the Great War followed the same course. Under
Napoleon's directions they ran the whole gamut of every scheme that ever
raised delusive hope before. Beginning from the beginning with the idea of
stealing his army across in flat-boats, he was met with the usual flotilla
defence. Then came his only new idea, which was to arm his transport
flotilla to the point of giving it power to force a passage for itself. We
replied by strengthening our flotilla. Convinced by experiment that his
scheme was now impracticable, he set his mind on breaking the blockade by
the sudden intrusion of a flying squadron from a distance. To this end
various plausible schemes were worked out, but plan after plan melted in
his hand, till he was forced to face the inevitable necessity of bringing
an overwhelming battle force up to his transports. The experience of two
centuries had taught him nothing. By a more distant concentration than had
ever been attempted before he believed he could break the fatal hold of his
enemy. The only result was so severely to exhaust his fleet that it never
could get within reach of the real difficulties of its task, a task which
every admiral in his service knew to be beyond the strength of the Imperial
Navy. Nor did Napoleon even approach a solution of the problem he had set
himself--invasion over an uncommanded sea. With our impregnable flotilla
hold covered by an automatic concentration of battle-squadrons off Ushant,
his army could never even have put forth, unless he had inflicted upon our
covering fleet such a defeat as would have given him command of the sea,
and with absolute control of the sea the passage of an army presents no
difficulties.

Of the working of these principles under modern conditions we have no
example. The acquisition of free movement must necessarily modify their
application, and since the advent of steam there have been only two
invasions over uncommanded seas--that of the Crimea in 1854, and that of
Manchuria in 1904--and neither of these cases is in point, for in neither
was there any attempt at naval defence. Still there seems no reason to
believe that such defence applied in the old manner would be less effective
than formerly. The flotilla was its basis, and since the introduction of
the torpedo the po