Our navy, as regards sea-experience, especially of the officers, was immensely superior to the French. When closely looked at, it is one of the strangest credit of the spirit of modern navies that, though the issues of land warfare are rarely thought instructive, the peace methods of land forces are extensively and eagerly copied by the sea-service. That there was such a thing as the command of the sea is rarely alluded to; and when it is, it is merely to accentuate the possibility of neutralising it by evading the force holding it. In the year 1809, the year of Wagram, Napoleon's military influence in Central Germany was, to say the least, not at its lowest. What place is still kept in our memories by even the most illustrious of those who have but recently left us? War is the method adopted, when less violent means of persuasion have failed, to force your enemy to comply with your demands.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the places alluded to are meant to be ports of refuge for our ships. The enemy's concentration might be attempted either towards Brest or towards Toulon. But did you hear what he said about going down there to South America, visiting a plantation his mother partly owns and taking his biplane along with him? And every day he was thinking more and more of what strange things the future might have in store for him, if he ever started on that exploring venture. He found the medicine, and as the packet turned out to be small enough to be stowed away in one of his coat pockets, Frank so disposed of it. Not so much because he feared that they would fail to gain the mastery over the fire as that some spark might find ingress to the shed and happen to alight upon a can of the dangerous gasoline.