into engineers. Most nations have adopted a compromise whereby the engineer partially replaces the old time seaman, and the deck officer and his men the old time soldiers-at-sea.
Ancient history has only a relative bearing on modern practice. Learned professors have evolved wonderful histories of military strategy in the early and middle ages and in past centuries, the study of which is supposed to help the modern soldier. But such modern soldiers as are out of the rut of ordinary progress seem to pin little faith in the Past as a criterion for the Future. Its utility is a classical idea, and in great measure bounded by the fact that the enemy has the same fancy. It was the modern idea not the Past that enabled Germany to beat France in 1870–71.
On the sea greater changes have been at work. On the land there has been a steady and constant evolution, nothing approaching a complete revolution has occurred. On the sea the revolution has been immense, and if there has not been a complete volte face, it is due only to the retarding influences alluded to above. 'Tactics alter, but principles of strategy do not,' says the gospel of the day. It is not true. Tactics remain much as they were, because the old idea of a warship still remains—strategy on the other hand has completely changed. The destruction of bases by Sea Power in the days of the great French war was impossible—to-day it is fully possible to the
