The first efforts at conquest on the South American mainland had met with little save disaster and disappointment, and were absolutely barren of result. Our other possessions on that continent were gained, not by hard fighting there, but by treaties dependent on hard fighting elsewhere. Both British Guiana and Honduras saw no battles fought on their soil by British soldiers. The former, captured in 1796, was confirmed to the English rule in 1814; the latter became a crown colony in 1867. Thus, though many of these expeditions rather partook of the nature of filibustering raids than real war, they none the less are interesting as showing the gradual extension of military operations beyond the main theatre of war. In many cases, doubtless, as in the landing on the French coast, no real benefit was derived from them, and they only tended to exasperate and embitter a contest that already was sufficiently imbued with these feelings. They brought the horrors of war on defenceless people, as well as on the enemy’s military and naval resources. In so doing they harassed and annoyed, and to some extent lent their aid to the otherwise needless dispersion of the enemy’s troops; but such deeds only lead to reprisals, and, like killing individual soldiers on outpost duty, have little real effect on the conduct or result of a campaign. Still there were many cases in which the semi-naval operations were of supreme value to a great naval power. The true outlet for a vigorous nation’s natural expansion is its colonies. Shorn of these, in many instances the parent country loses its most vital limbs, with increasing injury to the main trunk. Morally, as well as politically, the loss of colonial empire gravely affects the mother country. The loss of the American States to England long lowered her prestige in the eyes of Europe, and for a time led nations to think her end as a great power had come. The dropping away from Spain and Portugal of those vast colonies which owe their origin and existence to the energy of the people of those countries in the past, have left the mother countries far behind in the race, low down in the political scale of Europe. Hence the conquest of French and Spanish colonies in this prolonged war was not only a serious loss to the States concerned, but an important element of strength to the power that first of all effected the conquest, and then was strong enough to hold them. No doubt, in days when steam and telegraph were not, the element of secrecy entered largely into the calculation of how these attacks could be successfully planned and executed. It was possible then to attempt what now would be far more risky, because foreseen. “To be forewarned” is more than even “to be forearmed” in these modern days.