s than the overthrow of
Napoleon. Complete success at sea had failed to do it, but that success had
given us the power of applying the limited form, which was the most
decisive form of offence within our means. Its substantial contribution to
the final achievement of the object is now universally recognised.

The general result, then, of these considerations is that war by contingent
in the continental form seldom or never differs generically from unlimited
war, for the conditions required by limited war are seldom or never
present. But what may be called the British or maritime form is in fact the
application of the limited method to the unlimited form, as ancillary to
the larger operations of our allies--a method which has usually been open
to us because the control of the sea has enabled us to select a theatre in
effect truly limited.[5]

[5] Wellington's view of the essential factor was expressed to Rear
Admiral Martin, who was sent to Spain by the Admiralty to confer with him
in September 1813. "If anyone," he said, "wishes to know the history of
this war, I will tell them it is our maritime superiority gives me the
power of maintaining my army while the enemy are unable to do so."
(_Letters of Sir T. Byam Martin_) [Navy Records Society], ii, p. 499.

But what if the conditions of the struggle in which we wish to intervene
are such that no truly limited theatre is available? In that case we have
to choose between placing a contingent frankly at the disposal of our ally,
or confining ourselves to coastal diversion, as we did at Frederick the
Great's request in the early campaigns of the Seven Years' War. Such
operations can seldom be satisfactory to either party. The small positive
results of our efforts to intervene in this way have indeed done more than
anything to discredit this form of war, and to brand it as unworthy of a
first-class Power. Yet the fact remains that all the great continental
masters of war have feared or valued British intervention of this character
even in the most unfavourable conditions. It was because they looked for
its effects rather in the threat than in the performance. They did not
reckon for positive results at all. So long as such intervention took an
amphibious form they knew its disturbing effect upon a European situation
was always out of all proportion to the intrinsic strength employed or the
positive results it could give. Its operative action was that it threatened