n as this had been
accomplished, they began to fight each other for still further
possessions. Strangely enough, the colonial wars were never settled in
the colonies themselves. They were decided three thousand miles away
by the navies of the contending countries. It is one of the most
interesting principles of ancient and modern warfare (one of the few
reliable laws of history) that "the nation which commands the sea is
also the nation which commands the land." So far this law has never
failed to work, but the modern airplane may have changed it. In the
eighteenth century, however, there were no flying machines and it was
the British navy which gained for England her vast American and Indian
and African colonies.

The series of naval wars between England and Holland in the seventeenth
century does not interest us here. It ended as all such encounters
between hopelessly ill-matched powers will end. But the warfare between
England and France (her other rival) is of greater importance to us, for
while the superior British fleet in the end defeated the French navy,
a great deal of the preliminary fighting was done on our own American
continent. In this vast country, both France and England claimed
everything which had been discovered and a lot more which the eye of no
white man had ever seen. In 1497 Cabot had landed in the northern part
of America and twenty-seven years later, Giovanni Verrazano had visited
these coasts. Cabot had flown the English flag. Verrazano had sailed
under the French flag. Hence both England and France proclaimed
themselves the owners of the entire continent.

During the seventeenth century, some ten small English colonies had been
founded between Maine and the Carolinas. They were usually a haven
of refuge for some particular sect of English dissenters, such as the
Puritans, who in the year 1620 went to New England, or the Quakers, who
settled in Pennsylvania in 1681. They were small frontier communities,
nestling close to the shores of the ocean, where people had gathered to
make a new home and begin life among happier surroundings, far away from
royal supervision and interference.

The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained a possession of
the crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were allowed in these colonies
for fear that they might contaminate the Indians with their dangerous
Protestant doctrines and would perhaps interfere with the missionary
work of the Jesuit fathers. The En