Ages," says a French historian,
speaking of the same war, "England had conquered France single-handed,
almost without allies, France having powerful auxiliaries. She had
conquered solely by the superiority of her government." Yes; but it
was by the superiority of her government using the tremendous weapon
of her sea power,--the reward of a consistent policy perseveringly
directed to one aim.

The profound humiliation of France, which reached its depths between
1760 and 1763, at which latter date she made peace, has an instructive
lesson for the United States in this our period of commercial and
naval decadence. We have been spared her humiliation; let us hope to
profit by her subsequent example. Between the same years (1760 and
1763) the French people rose, as afterward in 1793, and declared they
would have a navy. "Popular feeling, skilfully directed by the
government, took up the cry from one end of France to the other, 'The
navy must be restored.' Gifts of ships were made by cities, by
corporations, and by private subscriptions. A prodigious activity
sprang up in the lately silent ports; everywhere ships were building
or repairing." This activity was sustained; the arsenals were
replenished, the material of every kind was put on a satisfactory
footing, the artillery reorganized, and ten thousand trained gunners
drilled and maintained.

The tone and action of the naval officers of the day instantly felt
the popular impulse, for which indeed some loftier spirits among them
had been not only waiting but working. At no time was greater mental
and professional activity found among French naval officers than just
then, when their ships had been suffered to rot away by governmental
inaction. Thus a prominent French officer of our own day writes:--

"The sad condition of the navy in the reign of Louis XV., by
closing to officers the brilliant career of bold enterprises and
successful battles, forced them to fall back upon themselves.
They drew from study the knowledge they were to put to the proof
some years later, thus putting into practice that fine saying of
Montesquieu, 'Adversity is our mother, Prosperity our
step-mother.'... By the year 1769 was seen in all its splendor
that brilliant galaxy of officers whose activity stretched to
the ends of the earth, and who embraced in their works and in
their investigations all the branches of human knowledge. The
Academie de Marine,