The Causes of our Present Discontents

Abstract

No student of history should expect the patterns of the past to be selfperpetuating, but the recorded insistence of the British on the maintenance of sea-power did correspond to certain obvious needs and opportunities. These were not diminished, but actually increased, by many of the trends that developed in the first three quarters of the twentieth century. A potential enemy had now emerged with much the same ideological incentive to the conquest of the British Isles as that once possessed by Philip II or the leaders of Revolutionary France. Growing British dependence on imports had sharpened the weapon, wielded in different forms by Napoleon, by Imperial Germany and by Hitler, of their denial. The identity and location of the enemy had reinforced the geographical advantage of the British Isles, that unsinkable aircraft carrier athwart the exits from the Baltic and the Norwegian Seas. On the face of it, there was more for the Navy to do than there had ever been. But there was also a very general acquiescence in its decline.

After the injuries of two of the severest wars that ever the Sea yet knew …

Samuel Pepys, 1675¹