offensively, and cannot be confined to one element alone. The intimate interaction of naval and military warfare in England's wars is often obscured from us by the fact that most of the work on land was done by our allies. Skilful foreign policy, helped by liberal subventions, enabled us to get the heavy and comparatively unprofitable work of continental fighting done for us. Our own little army was kept, as a rule, for the amphibious work of acquiring our Colonial Empire.
Not that the policy of the eighteenth century was in any way perfect. Far from it. The system of subventions was not so much a matter of choice, as, in a large measure, a matter of political necessity. The result of the long civil conflict of the seventeenth century had been to inspire the English nation with an intense jealousy and distrust of the army. But for that we can well imagine that the assistance given to our continental allies might have taken the form, not of money, but of men. We should in that case have been in a far stronger position. To use the industrial metaphor, we should have kept the military industry within our own borders. The hired foreign armies were not available everywhere or always, and the military skill evoked by the great struggles on the Continent did not inure to our benefit. It was the neglect of our army, the reckless cutting down after the Seven Years' War, that was the prime cause of the loss of the American Colonies. Had our army been only a little larger or a little more efficient, it could have crushed the American revolt at the outset. We should then still have had an opportunity for correcting our political errors in our treatment of the Colonies, as Rome had an opportunity for correcting her mistaken policy towards her Italian allies after she had crushed them in the social war. Again, even in Europe, the policy of hiring continental allies came to grief when revolutionary France suddenly brought into the field that new engine of war—the nation in arms. Our victory at Trafalgar was neutralized by our defeats at
