Until this is perceived there is much history which
cannot be understood, and yet it is essential to our welfare as a
maritime people that we should understand it thoroughly. Our
failure to understand it has more than once brought us, if not
to the verge of destruction, at any rate within a short distance
of serious disaster.
SEA-POWER IN ANCIENT TIMES
The high antiquity of decisive naval campaigns is amongst the most
interesting features of international conflicts. Notwithstanding
the much greater frequency of land wars, the course of history
has been profoundly changed more often by contests on the water.
That this has not received the notice it deserved is true, and
Mahan tells us why. 'Historians generally,' he says, 'have been
unfamiliar with the conditions of the sea, having as to it neither
special interest nor special knowledge; and the profound determining
influence of maritime strength on great issues has consequently been
overlooked.' Moralising on that which might have been is admittedly
a sterile process; but it is sometimes necessary to point, if
only by way of illustration, to a possible alternative. As in
modern times the fate of India and the fate of North America were
determined by sea-power, so also at a very remote epoch sea-power
decided whether or not Hellenic colonisation was to take root in,
and Hellenic culture to dominate, Central and Northern Italy as
it dominated Southern Italy, where traces of it are extant to this
day.
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