had noiselessly foiled Napoleon's plans.



CHAPTER 1.

DISCUSSION OF THE ELEMENTS OF SEA POWER.

The first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from
the political and social point of view is that of a great highway; or
better, perhaps, of a wide common, over which men may pass in all
directions, but on which some well-worn paths show that controlling
reasons have led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than
others. These lines of travel are called trade routes; and the reasons
which have determined them are to be sought in the history of the
world.

Notwithstanding all the familiar and unfamiliar dangers of the sea,
both travel and traffic by water have always been easier and cheaper
than by land. The commercial greatness of Holland was due not only to
her shipping at sea, but also to the numerous tranquil water-ways
which gave such cheap and easy access to her own interior and to that
of Germany. This advantage of carriage by water over that by land was
yet more marked in a period when roads were few and very bad, wars
frequent and society unsettled, as was the case two hundred years ago.
Sea traffic then went in peril of robbers, but was nevertheless safer
and quicker than that by land. A Dutch writer of that time, estimating
the chances of his country in a war with England, notices among other
things that the water-ways of England failed to penetrate the country
sufficiently; therefore, the roads being bad, goods from one part Of