It would be a supremacy limited and
reduced by the existence of the new navies that have sprung up.
From these considerations a very important conclusion must be drawn. In
the first place, enough victory at sea is in case of war as
indispensable to Great Britain as ever, for it remains the fundamental
condition of her security, yet its results can hardly in future be as
great as they were in the past, and in particular it may perhaps not
again enable her to exert upon continental States the same effective
pressure which it formerly rendered possible.
In order, therefore, to bring pressure upon a continental adversary,
Great Britain is more than ever in need of the co-operation of a
continental ally. A navy alone cannot produce the effect which it once
did upon the course of a land war, and its success will not suffice to
give confidence to the ally. Nothing but an army able to take its part
in a continental struggle will, in modern conditions, suffice to make
Great Britain the effective ally of a continental State, and in the
absence of such an army Great Britain will continue to be, as she is
to-day, without continental allies.
A second conclusion is that our people, while straining every nerve in
peace to ensure to their navy the best chances of victory in war, must
carefully avoid the conception of a dominion of the sea, although, in
fact, such a dominion actually existed during a great part of the
nineteenth century.
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