ones to defend them—a condition necessitating strategies. But it does not follow. To-day a fort protects to a great extent anything within its range of vision. Both range of vision and range of the weapon may be indefinitely extended by some at present inconceivable means. Then what room for strategies of any kind? Or will there still be room for scientific combinations, for the annihilation of one wonderful weapon by the concentration on it of two others which are situated at two different points and so cannot be simultaneously destroyed? Or will radius have so increased that there is no room anywhere for two points sufficiently far apart?
Such speculations and questions may seem the idlest of idle dreams. But this is merely a superficial view. If we use the history of the past to aid us in the present and in preparing for the immediate future, it is not safe to accept a 'law' unless it is applicable to any reasonable conditions of evolution that we may conceive. Otherwise we may find ourselves in the same error as the Carthaginian admiral Hannibal when he found himself faced by the Roman corvi.
The Carthaginians must assuredly have been familiar with the history of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, and the collapse of Athenian Sea Power before the 'other ways' of the Syracusans. They were familiar with crash tactics as opposed to the more scientific ramming tactics—pecking tactics—that might be employed. They were familiar with
