Our own experience seems to indicate that war by contingent or war with "a
disposal force" attains the highest success when it approaches most closely
to true limited war--that is, as in the case of the Peninsula and the
Crimea, where its object is to wrest or secure from the enemy a definite
piece of territory that to a greater or less extent can be isolated by
naval action. Its operative power, in fact, appears to bear some direct
relation to the intimacy with which naval and military action can be
combined to give the contingent a weight and mobility that are beyond its
intrinsic power.

If, then, we would unravel the difficulties of war limited by contingent,
it seems necessary to distinguish between the continental and the British
form of it. The continental form, as we have seen, differs but little in
conception from unlimited war. The contingent is furnished at least
ostensibly with the idea that it is to be used by the chief belligerent to
assist him in overthrowing the common enemy, and that its objective will be
the enemy's organised forces or his capital. Or it may be that the
contingent is to be used as an army of observation to prevent a
counterstroke, so as to facilitate and secure the main offensive movement
of the chief belligerent. In either case, however small may be our
contribution to the allied force, we are using the unlimited form and
aiming at an unlimited and not a mere territorial object.

If now we turn to British experience of war limited by contingent, we find
that the continental form has frequently been used, but we also find it
almost invariably accompanied by a popular repugnance, as though there were
something in it antagonistic to the national instinct. A leading case is
the assistance we sent to Frederick the Great in the Seven Years' War. At
the opening of the war, so great was the popular repugnance that the
measure was found impossible, and it was not till Frederick's dazzling