prove strong enough to win in the end, unless interference by some other power prevents it; while a nation that is too weak to keep war, with all its devastation and ruin, out of its territory, must certainly be defeated unless assisted by some neighboring people. The invaders may, and probably will, lose the greater number of men in the pitched battles; but it is not their harvests that will be trampled, not their mills that will be burned, not their bridges that will be blown up, not their homes that will be desolated, not their families that must fly for shelter to the caves and the forests. Their sources of supply are untouched. This principle was recognized by Scipio, when he declared that the war with Carthage "must be carried into Africa." {026}As England claimed to be mistress of the seas, and practically the claim was almost true, the determination to send our little navy and a fleet of privateers against her was essentially carrying the war into English territory. And as this part of the contest was conducted with skill and valor, it was gloriously successful. An invasion of Canada being determined upon, the first question that necessarily arose was, at what point that country should first be attacked. To any one not skilled in military science the most obvious plan would seem the best--to march as large a force as possible, without delay, into Canada at the nearest point. A young officer, Major Jesup, of Kentucky, sent a memorial to the Secretary of War, in which he set forth a totally different plan from this. He proposed that a strong expedition should be fitted out to capture and hold Halifax, which was then a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, with the most important harbor in the Canadian provinces. As a precedent, he could refer to the capture of Louis-burg in 1748. But the Secretary, Hon. William Eustis, of Massachusetts, spoke of it contemptuously as "a very pretty plan," and set it aside. Yet it was sound in principle, and if properly carried out could hardly have failed to secure important results. In striking an enemy on the flank, it is {027}always desirable, to choose that flank by which he holds communication with his base. A blow on the other flank may inflict injury, but it only drives him back toward his base. A movement that cuts him off from such communication compels him either to surrender or to fight at great disadvantage Canada's base--for many supplies, and largely for soldiers--was England. The port of Quebec was frozen up nearly half the year, and the occupation of Halifax by an American force would have gone far toward severing the connection between the provinces and the mother country. That harbor, too, was all-important for the refuge and refitting of British naval vessels on this side of the Atlantic.