seed that choked all the finer aspirations
of the French navy. In 1691 the plan of his cruise may possibly be defended
as sufficiently aggressive, since, seeing how unstable was William's new
throne, a resounding blow at British trade, combined with an expected
victory in Ireland, might have been enough to upset it. But afterwards the
idea was stretched to occasions it would not fit. It seems to have bred a
belief that where the object of the war plainly depended on winning a real
command of the sea, that object could yet be attained by naval defensive
operations. Many times it is true a policy which had starved the navy of
France left no other course open to her seamen, and had they in their
inferiority attempted the offensive, the end must have been swifter if not
more certain. In criticising the maritime history of France we must be
careful to distinguish policy from strategy. It was not always the
defensive strategy that was bad, but the policy that condemned her admirals
to negative operations. Seeing that she was a continental Power with
continental aspirations, it was often a policy from which her military
exigencies permitted no escape. Nevertheless the policy was twice accursed:
it cursed her when she was weak, and cursed her when she was strong. The
prolonged use of the defensive bred a habit of mind which seems to have
rendered her incapable of striking hard when she had the strength. In no
other way at least can we account for the behaviour of so high-spirited a
nation when her chance of revenge came in the War of American Independence.

It is here in its moral reactions lies the danger of the defensive, a
danger so insidious in its working as to tempt us never to utter the word.
Yet with the voice of Torrington, Kempenfelt, and Nelson in our ears, it
would be folly to ignore it for ourselves, and still more to ignore the
exhausting strain its use by our enemy may impose upon us. It must be
studied, if for no other reasons than to learn how to break it down. Nor
will the study have danger, if only we keep well in view the spirit of
restless and vigilant counter-attack which Kempenfelt and Nelson regarded
as its essence. True, some of the conditions which in the days of sails
made for opportunity have passed away, but many still remain. Shifts of
wind and calms will no longer bring them, but weather thick or violent can
yet make seamanship, nimbleness, and cohesion tell as it always did; and
there is no reason