Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/39



section deals with certain well-known wars in which accepted theories of Sea Power were either actually or apparently ignored by the victors. Each war concerned the birth or fall of a great sea empire. For reasons advanced in the Introduction, only the general features and main strategies of these wars are touched on, as it is desirable to concentrate upon the main principles involved. The Napoleonic and other great conflicts immediately preceding it, upon which the 'dogma of Sea Power' generally rests, are omitted, as their chief features and the lessons usually adduced therefrom will already be sufficiently familiar to the reader to need no references beyond such as may casually be made in the following text.