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Updated: May 31, 2025
Soliman was confronted with a new, and, to him, an almost mysterious thing, for the onward conquering step of the Moslem hosts was being checked by that sea-power so little understanded of the Turk, and the imperious will of the Sultan seemed powerless to prevent the disasters conjured from the deep.
The policy of Aristides, despite his so-called democratic reforms, was conservative; he persuaded Greece, by sound arguments, to the side of Athens: he was for Athens doing her duty by Greece, and remaining content. That of Themistocles was that she should aim at empire by any means: should make herself a sea-power with a view to dominating the Greek world.
The chart of the world furnishes evidence of the wisdom and the thoroughness of their procedure. Taught by the experience of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, when unimpeded by the political circumstances of the time, and provided with suitable equipment, the English displayed their energy in distant seas. It now became simply a question of the efficiency of sea-power.
First, the development of a British civilisation in Australia has synchronised with the attainment and unimpaired maintenance of dominant sea-power by the parent nation. The supremacy of Great Britain upon the blue water enabled her colonies to grow to strength and wealth under the protection of a mighty arm.
We have to deal here more especially with the naval element, and we must study the manner in which it operates. Naval war is sea-power in action; and sea-power, taken in the narrow sense, has limitations. It may not, even when so taken, cease to act at the enemy's coast-line, but its direct influence extends only to the inner side of a narrow zone conforming to that line.
But while a supreme navy suffices to protect an island empire, it does not suffice to defend continental states; and the importance of British sea-power was that it gave us and other oversea peoples the liberty to take as much or as little part as we chose in a war to defend states that were threatened on land.
The Minoan Empire, like our own, rested upon sea-power; its great Kings were the Sea-Kings of the ancient world the first Sea-Kings known to history, over-lords of the Ægean long before 'the grave Tyrian trader' had learned 'the way of a ship in the sea, or the land-loving Egyptian had ventured his timid squadrons at the command of a great Queen so far as Punt.
From that time forward New France was sealed up as completely as if it had shrunk to a single fort. Nothing came in and nothing went out. The strangling coils of British sea-power were all round it. But still Montcalm stood defiantly at bay. 'You must maintain your foothold to the very last. 'I shall do it or die. His plan was to keep the British at arm's length as long as possible.
Grote speaks of 'the conversion of Athens from a land-power into a sea-power. In a lecture published in 1883, but probably delivered earlier, the late Sir J. R. Seeley says that 'commerce was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish sea-power. The term also occurs in vol. xviii. of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica, published in 1885.
Those who saw a German corps march through Brussels said that it seemed irresistible. What if they had seen the whole German army? Here was the counterpart of the whole German army in sea-power and in land-power, too. The destroyer commander looked at his watch. "Time!" he said. "I'll put you on shore." He must take his place in the fleet at a given moment.
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