It is now established that the superiority in these details, which the Americans certainly enjoyed, was not great, and not of itself enough to account for their victories. Of course, if superiority in mere _matériel_, beyond a certain well-understood amount, is possessed by one of two combatants, his antagonist can hardly escape defeat; but it was never alleged that size of ship or calibre of guns--greater within reasonable limits than we had--necessarily led to the defeat of British ships by the French or Spaniards. In the words of Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, 'The ships of the United States constantly fought with the chances in their favour.' 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 'Encyclopédie,' seemed more exact than when first written. '_L'empire_des_mers_,' he says, is, 'le plus avantageux de tous les empires; les Phoeniciens le possédoient 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. It was not till recently that the greater part of the nation--for there were many, and still are some exceptions--perceived that it was the medium apart from which the British Empire could no more live than it could have grown up. Forty years after the fall of Napoleon we found ourselves again at war with a great power. We had as our ally the owner of the greatest navy in the world except our own. Our foe, as regards his naval forces, came the next in order. Yet so overwhelming was the strength of Great Britain and France on the sea that Russia never attempted to employ her navy against them. Not to mention other expeditions, considerable enough in themselves, military operations on the largest scale were undertaken, carried on for many months, and brought to a successful termination on a scene so remote that