Failing such support, the cruiser can only dash out hurriedly a short distance from home, and its blows, though painful, cannot be fatal.

It was not the policy of 1667, but Cromwell's powerful fleets of ships-of-the-line in 1652, that shut the Dutch merchantmen in their ports and caused the grass to grow in the streets of Amsterdam.

When, instructed by the suffering of that time, the Dutch kept large fleets afloat through two exhausting wars, though their commerce suffered greatly, they bore up the burden of the strife against England and France united.

Forty years later, Louis XIV.

was driven, by exhaustion, to the policy adopted by Charles II.
through parsimony.