Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/123

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IMMUNITY OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.
109

thing as naval warfare. In fact, during the last two wars naval warfare was suspended. The Russian fleets remained behind Cronstadt or were sunk in the Sevastopol roadsteads, and their crews fought on land in the entrenchments. In the Franco-German war, the marine particularly distinguished itself for its discipline and courage, not in the element which was theirs, but in the villages of Beaumont and Bazeilles, and in the armies of Chanzy and Faidherbe. Now to put an end to naval warfare is to deprive England of her appropriate arm; that arm in which she has hitherto been supreme, and by the use of which a small island in the German Ocean acquired colonies, riches and power out of all proportion to its size or the number of its population. If England yields up the instrument by which she acquired this position, is it possible that she will be able long to maintain the position? It is as if a nation were deliberately to tear