The country standing in exception to this has been Great Britain, whose isolated and insular situation demanded a defense that was strictly naval.

The tremendous advance in recent times of the engineering arts, by which ships became larger and faster, and able to carry more powerful and accurate guns than ever before, has enhanced the value of naval power and enabled Great Britain to reach all over the surface of the earth, and become more powerful than any continental nation.

Thus she has made out of the very weakness of her position a paramount tower of strength.
Naval defense was taken up systematically in Great Britain in the eighth century by King Offa, to whom is credited the maxim, "He who would be secure on land must be supreme at sea"; but it must have dropped to a low ebb by 1066, for William of Normandy landed in England unopposed.

Since that time Great Britain's naval defense, committed to her navy, has increased steadily in effectiveness and power, keeping pace with the increase in the national interests it defended, and utilizing all the growing resources of wealth and science which the world afforded.

Until the present crisis, Great Britain's naval defense did its most important work during Napoleon's time, when Great Britain's standing, like the standing of every other European nation, was subjected to a strain that it could hardly bear.