secured an opportunity to torpedo one of the opposing battleships. She failed, because the torpedo did not run truly, but this is the chapter of bad luck rather than anything else. Had she succeeded, the advantages of a guerre de course would have been patent. The 'might have been' is, however, as valuable to our purpose as anything else, since it indicates the possibilities of the strategy adopted by Peru.
The Huascar was further hampered by Chili making what—without dogma—may be called the correct reply. There was a little in the way of splitting up to protect commerce and coasts, The Chilians kept together, having the definite objective of concerning their antagonist always in view. This war then indicates the intelligibility of the Gueree de course as the refuge of the weaker power.
It is, curiously enough, the only instance of it in the ironclad age. In the Austro-Italian war of 1866 the Italian fleet, which was the stronger, wasted its efforts on other objects that the hostile fleet, but hardly sufficiently for the operations to be called guerre de course. The Chino-Japanese war and the Hispano-American conflicts were of the nature of of ships fighting each other, and so also, except partially, was the Russo-Japanese War.
The Exception was the action of the Vladivostok squadron which unfitted to fight successfully with the Japanese cruisers, attempted raids and commerce attack. In this it had some success, and had it not
