The success of the English in this form of colonial enterprise was due to many factors of circumstance and policy. Their insular position freed them from the expense of maintaining a large army and required them to put their money into a navy for protection. The ships which protected them, unlike armies, could sail the seven seas, seize distant territories, and defend broad dominions. Early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, English statesmen saw with half an eye the sign of the sea power. They did not evolve a grand scheme such as Captain Alfred Mahan, long after the deeds, formulated in a coherent and cogent theory of words, but they discovered that lands beyond the seas could be permanently held only by a sovereign who also ruled the waves.
Acting on that understanding they laid the foundations of the navy which struck down the Spaniards in the battle of the Armada in 1588, the Dutch in a long series of conflicts, the French in two hundred years of warfare, and at last, in the fullness of time, the Germans who grasped for the trident. It was through the sea power that England was able to seize and hold the geographical theaters for her commercial and colonial empire.
Rivalries and jealousies of the continental states likewise served England's imperial fortune. Slowly, through their endless strife with rulers on the other side of the Channel, English statesmen worked out a flexible system known as "the balance of power," which made for safety at home and dominion in America, Asia, and Africa. With a skill that was a marvel to the seasoned chancelleries of Europe, they played the Dutch against the French, the French against the Dutch, the Prussians against the French, and the French against the Prussians.
By such means the governments of Europe that singly or in combination might have defied England on the sea were worn down to wrathful impotence. Dutch soldiers allied with England sent to their graves thousands of Louis XIV's best men who, if they had lived, might have built securely the groundwork of a French state in Canada. The power
