The question of Nelson's action at Naples was brought forward in a way which required from me some controversial writing. To this I have no intention of alluding here, beyond stating that up to the present my confidence has not been shaken in my defence of the main lines of his conduct, clearing him of the deceit and double-dealing alleged against him. I say this because there may be some who have thought me silenced by argument, in that I have not seen fit to rise to such crude taunts as that, "After this Captain Mahan will not undertake," etc. What Captain Mahan will or will not do is of no particular importance; but when the repute of such an one as Nelson is at stake, burdened by the weight of calumny laid upon him by Southey's ill-instructed censures, it is right to repeat that nothing I have seen since I last wrote, about 1900, has appeared to me to call for further answer. _The Life of Nelson_, and _The War of 1812_, of which I have already spoken, remain my last extensive works. In the interval between them, 1897-1902, I was engaged mostly in occasional writing, for magazines or otherwise. From time to time these papers have been collected and published, under titles which seemed appropriate. Concerning them, for the most part, there is one general statement to be made. With few exceptions, they have been written to order. Partly from indisposition to this particular activity, partly from indolence, ultimately from conviction that editors best know--or should know--what the public want, I have left them to come to me. When expedient, I have taken a subject somewhat apart from that suggested, but usually akin. Speaking again generally, the field of thought into which I have been thus drawn has been that of the external policy of nations, and of their mutual--international--relations; not in respect to international law, on which I have no claim to teach, but to the examination of extant conditions, and the appreciation of their probable and proper effect upon future events and present action. In conception, these studies are essentially military. The conditions are to my apprehension forces, contending, perhaps even conflicting; to be handled by those responsible as a government disposes its fleets and armies. This is not advocacy of war, but recognition that the providential movement of the world proceeds through the pressure of circumstances; and that adverse circumstances can be controlled only by organization of means, in which armed physical power is one dominant factor.