sent from his final conclusions. We are, no doubt, unready, and this book may be of considerable use in conveying the fact to the citizen, on whose initiative most of the recent increases in our naval preparations have been made.

Major Callwell's rather cumbrously entitled book is in essence a continuation of Captain Mahan. That eminent historian carries his narrative to the battle of Waterloo; Major Call well takes up the story at that period and brings it down to the year before last. The campaigns he considers are for the most part less attractive to the imagination than the great struggle which ended in 1815; but to the student of modern military history they are sometimes even more instructive. The introduction of steam, to take only one case, has enormously altered the conditions attaching to the transport of troops by sea. The advance in the destructiveness of weapons has modified these conditions almost to an equal extent. Major Call well takes in these and all other conditions of strategy with rich knowledge and a thorough grasp of the principles of his subject. The necessary historical retrospects are marked by discretion and the rare power of omitting all but the essential. As for the principles laid down they are now widely recognised, and may in time attain to the Nirvana of the commonplace. Every leader-writer can explain to you how the defeat of Balmaceda during the last Chilian war was directly traceable to the maritime power exerted by the Congressionalists. Even in wars from which unthinking criticism eliminates naval influence altogether, Major Call well has no difficulty in pointing out and estimating its weight. The most interesting and pointed of these is found, perhaps, in the

two struggles between Germany and Denmark for the possession of Schleswig and Holstein. In the war of 1848 Denmark possessed maritime command and used it. The German Confederation was prodigiously superior on land. The Danes were decisively beaten at the battle of Schleswig. But when they retired to their islands, or to the lines of Düppel, where they rested on the sea, they were not only invulnerable, but were able to concentrate sudden attacks on the weak points of the enemy. The most brilliant example of this was the relief of Fredericia. A large German army was besieging this coast - fortress. The Danes landed troops both north and south of them, and then, with the garrison, executed a sudden and combined attack. The Germans lost all their siegeguns and 3000 men, whereon they abandoned the war. In the war of 1864 the story is very different. During the early part of the campaign the Danes made little use of their superiority at sea; during the later the advent of Tegethoff's Austrian squadron put that superiority in doubt. Instead of using sea-command to deliver bold attacks at critical points, the Danes wasted it in what the modern French writers call a guerre des côtes et de course-attacking coasttowns and merchantmen, whose loss was not felt by Prussia. Their firmest stands they chose to make in positions where sea-power could not help them; they had neglected the strategic points of the former war where it could. Therefore they were defeated. The contrast between the two wars-in one of which maritime command neutralised an enormous inferiority on land; in the other of which it was not put into effect, and then disappeared altogether-could hardly

be bettered as an example of the value of sea-power if it had been invented for the purpose.

On this point Major Callwell's essay finds a parallel in a similar deduction from the first Danish war, to be found in Mr Spenser Wilkinson's' The Command of the Sea.' In another of his examples -the Crimea-he unconsciously doubles an interesting passage of Mr Thursfield's from 'The Navy and the Nation.' These coincidences are of interest, not as suggesting any hint of plagiarism on one side or the other, but because -if we may quote what the jointauthors of 'The Navy and the Nation' say of themselves "the lack of co-operation emphasises the essential unity of purpose which pervades them." The theory of the command of the sea has become, as we said above, a kind of authorised version. Its vital influence on the Crimean campaign is well brought out by both Major Call well and Mr Thursfield. This war, says the latter, has been paradoxically taken by some not unintelligent people "as a convincing proof that the days of naval warfare are over. What did the Navy do for us, they ask, in the Black Sea or in the Baltic? It could not destroy Cronstadt, and it could not take Sebastopol." Yet, as both authors urge, it was the British and French fleets, and they alone, which made the expedition to the Crimea possible at all. It was the fleets, and they alone, which made the reduction of Sebastopol possible. Had the Sea of Azov been occupied earlier, Major Callwell acutely suggests, so much the earlier would the place have fallen. The Baltic fleet, which has been taken as an especial indication of naval impotence, did inestimable service. By the threat of a new Allied inva

sion in that quarter it paralysed many legions whose influence might have turned the fortune of war in the Crimea. In the very FrancoGerman war, where nobody could pretend that sea-power had much weight where the French fleet only kept a German corps in the maritime provinces during the time there was not transport to send them to the front even here Major Callwell can still award its due influence to maritime command. For if France made little use of the supremacy in the North Sea, she enjoyed that of the Mediterranean to the full. She was able to bring over seasoned troops from Algiers and Rome, and these played no inconsiderable part in stiffening the desperate resistance which the Germans had to break down after Sedan. Briefly, we may say that Major Callwell demonstrates with cogency that naval power has exerted its influence in nearly all the wars of the century, and that in many of them that influence has been decisive.

There is one point of controversy upon which this author embarks, which, as it is also emphatically argued in 'The Navy and the Nation,' will perhaps repay a short examination. This is the doctrine of "the fleet in being." The phrase is taken from Torrington's defence of himself after his defeat at Beachy Head in 1690. Admiral Colomb has taken it up and elevated it into a technical term, and Mr Thursfield follows him. We quote his succinct statement of the theory which underlies the phrase: "A fleet in being, too large to be treated as a negligible quantity by an adversary opposed to it, is an absolute bar to all serious enterprise, maritime or territorial, on the part of that adversary." "Command of the sea," he says elsewhere, "and a

on

fleet in being are mutually exclusive terms." Certainly it so proved in Torrington's case. After his defeat he withdrew his fleet, which, though beaten, was far from being shattered, into the mouth of the Thames. Thereon De Tourville, the French admiral, not daring to risk any important operations while this fleet still threatened him, made a wholly unimportant raid on the coast of Devonshire, and so bore away for France. It is true that this one instance hardly constitutes a rule of strategy, and Major Callwell does not believe in the rule. He points out that on two occasions during the present century-the descent of Ibrahim Pasha the Morea in 1825 and the invasion of the Crimea-this rule was neglected. On both occasions there was a fleet in being, yet both enterprises were carried to a successful issue. In the first case the Greek admiral, Miaulis, had a general command of the sea, but he loitered inactive in the Cyclades while Ibrahim's transports were at sea. In the second, the Allies invaded the Crimea while the Russian fleet was still unbroken. The French and Turkish warships were used as transports, leaving only the British to convoy them, and the Russians had in Sebastopol a squadron equal in strength to the convoying force. However, they made no move, and, in spite of the fleet in being, the landing was successfully accomplished. Major Callwell adduces a third instance in the recent invasion of Korea by the Japanese, although the Chinese fleet was still unbeaten and at large.

Mr Thursfield, who takes the other side, is able to bring to bear an equal, indeed a greater, number of instances, in which the fleet in being has succeeded in preventing serious enterprise. The example

of Torrington may be called a negative one. Tourville was deterred from his purpose of invading England, and there was an end of it. A good case, when the fleet in being was neglected with disastrous results, he quotes from the First Punic War. In 249 B.C. the Romans attacked the fortress of Lilyboum although the Carthaginians had a fleet in being: they sustained a smashing defeat, and only thirty ships were saved out of over two hundred. Another case was Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, hard on the top of which Nelson's fleet in being asserted itself at the Nile, and the expeditionary army was ruined. The instance from the Chino-Japanese war Mr Thursfield meets with the reply that had Admiral Ting been a Nelson the Japanese invaders must have been ruined. No doubt. Only we are not all Nelsons; indeed, Nelsons are very rare. But Mr Thursfield is not really begging the question, though he seems to be. He appears to us to put the matter on its right footing when he says that "a temporary evasion of the fleet in being is always possible-perhaps in some rare and exceptional cases it may be justified... by a sound estimate of the relative forces engaged." And he points out with great force that the battle of the Yalu and Ting's subsequent retreat prove that Admiral Ito had rightly estimated the value of the Chinese fleet in being. The truth is that the difference between Major Call well and Mr Thursfield is much less than it appears. It is a difference rather in statement than in principle. The former takes the maxim to be absolute and unconditioned, that a fleet in being must in all cases debar operations while it remains in being. So stated, no doubt it can be proved incorrect. Mr Thursfield takes the maxim to

mean that the fleet in being, when properly handled or when there is an expectation that it will be properly handled, must debar operations. No doubt there are opponents in dealing with whom it may be safe to neglect any rule of strategy ever formulated. The true leader reckons up his opponent, and according to that reckoning he takes risks or he does not. But whether the risks turn out well or ill, the principles of strategy remain as true as ever.

In a masterly introduction the joint authors of The Navy and the Nation' explain the purport of their book. What that is the references we have already made to its teaching will have explained. The vital dependence of our country and our empire on the command of the sea; the truth that this can only be exerted by a superior fleet at sea; the certainty that, so long as we possess that, no mortal hurt can befall us at the hands of any assailant,—these supreme principles of true British policy are insisted upon again and again, variously and in various contexts, but always with convincing lucidity and force. To some readers the iteration may appear superfluous, especially as the two writers have wittingly allowed their views, and almost their expressions, to overlap. But to the reader who thinks the repetitions superfluous, we should advise half an hour with this book whenever he feels disposed to reflect on questions of defensive policy and of strategy. He will then perceive that though it is comparatively easy to state the principles which underlie these essays, and perfectly easy to see their cogency when they are stated for him, it is yet a matter of some difficulty to get them so clearly and deeply into his head that they shall colour his whole habit of thought on such

questions. We see it every day. Men who have read the great works of Captain Mahan and Admiral Colomb with the immediate acceptance that they cannot fail to command, who, it may be, will remember these very essays in the form of their original publication-these same men, when they are left to themselves to speak or write of national defence, are constantly found forgetting their lesson and reverting to the fallacious theories on which they were brought up. They will catch themselves thinking of Malta as "commanding" the central Mediterranean, of a squadron in the Channel as necessary to defend our southern coasts and our seaborne trade. But if he will take down the 'The Navy and the Nation,' here is an ever-present reminder of the real facts. Without a fleet Malta commands nothing, not even itself. The Channel Squadron may easily be defending our coasts and our merchantmen off Toulon far more effectively than it could do at Portland; and the only defensive influence it exerts at Portland lies in the knowledge that it may, and, if need be, will, go somewhere else. Perhaps the best corrective of such persistent misapprehensions will be found in a brilliant essay by Sir George Clarke, entitled, "The German Strategist at Sea." The German strategist is at sea indeed, though not perhaps worse than many a Briton. But it is safe to say that nobody who has read Sir George Clarke's caustic and witty commentary on him will ever be quite so hopelessly at sea again.

Space is coming to an end, so that we are constrained to leave this altogether admirable volume with a less detailed examination than it deserves. If we have selected one essay as peculiarly instructive, it is only because

error is more effectively refuted in a concrete instance than by the mere exposition of the true doctrine. But of the chapters of 'The Navy and the Nation' we may say that, whether they discuss the naval history of the past or the naval conditions of the future, whether they deal with the central problem of defence or with such side-issues as national insurance, the training of naval officers, or the proper function of submarine mines, they are always sound and always enlightening. The whole book is knit together by the firm grasp of both its authors upon the unalterable first principles of naval war.

One of the most interesting passages in the book explains the increased validity-if we may use a paradox: perhaps it is better to say, the wider and fuller application-which these principles have derived from the modern technical conditions. Courage and coolness remain a potent factor, as ever; tactics strive, though by new means, towards the same end-an advantage in the use of the gun. But the telegraph and steam increase the swiftness with which naval command can assert itself, and the area over which it takes effect. The time required for such operations as an inferior fleet might venture against our islands -landing of troops or bombardments has not been reduced in proportion to the time which will bring a superior fleet upon the landing or bombarding force. Trading steamers are far less vulnerable than sailing-ships; they can separate if attacked, while even a single ship lost sight of at night can change her course in any direction, and is virtually safe. So that, as our authors remind us, "the command of the sea has now a significance which neither Raleigh nor Nelson could have divined."

We can find but one contention in this book which, as it is stated, appears to us open to some question. In the domain of national policy, our authors argue,—

"The necessity of maintaining naval supremacy-vital to us alone among the Powers of the world-ought to dominate every other consideration.

Did the inevitable advance of Russia from the Caspian to the frontier of India imperil our naval supremacy? If not, of what use were the flood of declamation and the protracted diplomatic warfare, each alike undignified and futile, of which the sole result was the estrangement of two nations, which have no real cause of disagreement. Is the military occupation of Egypt essential to the command of the sea? Would a Russian occupation of Constantinople, some twenty-six hours' steam from Sebastopol, compromise our naval position?"

These arguments appear to us to raise the question, Was the Navy made for the nation, or the nation for the Navy? No doubt we could give up Egypt and India, and almost our whole empire, and still maintain our naval supremacy. The only difference would be that in that case naval supremacy would find less work to do, although, of course, still essential to the inviolability of the British Isles. No doubt it is a strong argument against any foreign policy that it is antagonistic to naval supremacy, or increases the burden laid upon it. But we do not think maritime command can be made out the one end-hardly even the "basis"—of all British policy. That it is the indispensable condition of British policy, that we can do nothing without it, is the indisputable and invaluable principle of the book. Assuredly we should regulate our imperial expansion by our Navy. But should we rot also fit our Navy to our imperial expansion?