' All this is indisputable.
Nevertheless we ought to see to it that in any future war our
sea-power, great as it may be, does not receive shocks like those
that it unquestionably did receive in 1812.
[Footnote 46: _Naval_War_of_1812_, 3rd ed. pp. 29, 30.]
SEA-POWER IN RECENT TIMES
We have now come to the end of the days of the naval wars of
old time. The subsequent period has been illustrated repeatedly
by manifestations of sea-power, often of great interest and
importance, though rarely understood or even discerned by the
nations which they more particularly concerned. The British
sea-power, notwithstanding the first year of the war of 1812,
had come out of the great European conflict unshaken and indeed
more preeminent than ever. The words used, half a century before
by a writer in the great French 'Encyclopedie,' seemed more exact
than when first written. '_L'empire_des_mers_,' he says, is,
'le plus avantageux de tous les empires; les Phoeniciens le
possedoient autre fois et c'est aux Anglois que cette gloire
appartient aujourd'hui sur toutes les puissances maritimes.'[47]
Vast out-lying territories had been acquired or were more firmly
held, and the communications of all the over-sea dominions of the
British Crown were secured against all possibility of serious
menace for many years to come. Our sea-power was so ubiquitous
and all-pervading that, like the atmosphere, we rarely thought
of it and rarely remembered its necessity or its existence.
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