of the great and steady power of movement possessed by the modern
steamer. The best-planned schemes might fail through stress of weather
in the days of the galley and the sailing-ship; but this difficulty
has almost disappeared. The principles which should direct great naval
combinations have been applicable to all ages, and are deducible from
history; but the power to carry them out with little regard to the
weather is a recent gain.

The definitions usually given of the word "strategy" confine it to
military combinations embracing one or more fields of operations,
either wholly distinct or mutually dependent, but always regarded as
actual or immediate scenes of war. However this may be on shore, a
recent French author is quite right in pointing out that such a
definition is too narrow for naval strategy. "This," he says, "differs
from military strategy in that it is as necessary in peace as in war.
Indeed, in peace it may gain its most decisive victories by occupying
in a country, either by purchase or treaty, excellent positions which
would perhaps hardly be got by war. It learns to profit by all
opportunities of settling on some chosen point of a coast, and to
render definitive an occupation which at first was only transient." A
generation that has seen England within ten years occupy successively
Cyprus and Egypt, under terms and conditions on their face transient,
but which have not yet led to the abandonment of the positions taken,
can readily agree with this remark; which indeed receives constant
illustration from the quiet persistency with which all the great sea
powers are seeking position after position, less noted and less
noteworthy than Cyprus and Egypt, in the different seas to which their
people and their ships penetrate. "Naval strategy has indeed for its
end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the
sea power of a country;" and therefore its study has an interest and