From race affinities and situation those two islands are as legitimately objects of desire to Italy as Gibraltar is to Spain.
If the Adriatic were a great highway of commerce, Italy's position would be still more influential.

These defects in her geographical completeness, combined with other causes injurious to a full and secure development of sea power, make it more than doubtful whether Italy can for some time be in the front rank among the sea nations.
As the aim here is not an exhaustive discussion, but merely an attempt to show, by illustration, how vitally the situation of a country may affect its career upon the sea, this division of the subject may be dismissed for the present; the more so as instances which will further bring out its importance will continually recur in the historical treatment.

Two remarks, however, are here appropriate.
Circumstances have caused the Mediterranean Sea to play a greater part in the history of the world, both in a commercial and a military point of view, than any other sheet of water of the same size.

Nation after nation has striven to control it, and the strife still goes on.
Therefore a study of the conditions upon which preponderance in its waters has rested, and now rests, and of the relative military values of different points upon its coasts, will be more instructive than the same amount of effort expended in another field.

Furthermore, it has at the present time a very marked analogy in many respects to the Caribbean Sea,--an analogy which will be still closer if a Panama canal-route ever be completed.