arranged the best possible disposition of the force which he commanded."

The great final victory of Trafalgar was prepared in the same way, and
the various memoranda written in the period before the battle have
revealed to recent investigation the unwearying care which Nelson
devoted to finding out how best to concentrate his force upon that
portion of the enemy's fleet which it would be most difficult for the
enemy to support with the remainder.

Nelson's great merit, his personal contribution to his country's
influence, lay first and foremost in his having by intellectual effort
solved the tactical problem set to commanders by the conditions of the
naval weapon of his day, the fleet of line-of-battle ships; and
secondly, in his being possessed and inspired by the true strategical
doctrine that the prime object of naval warfare is the destruction of
the enemy's fleet, and therefore that the decisive point in the theatre
of war is the point where the enemy's fleet can be found. It was the
conviction with which he held this principle that enabled him in
circumstances of the greatest difficulty to divine where to go to find
the enemy's fleet; which in 1798 led him persistently up and down the
Mediterranean till he had discovered the French squadron anchored at
Aboukir; which in 1805 took him from the Mediterranean to the West
Indies, and from the West Indies back to the Channel.

So much for Nelson's share of the work. But Nelson could neither have
educated himself nor made full use of his education if the navy of his
day had not been inspired with the will to fight and to conquer, with
the discipline that springs from that will, and had not obtained through
long experience of war the high degree of skill in seamanship and in
gunnery which made it the instrument its great commander required. These