BY Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir David Beatty, G.C.B., O.M., G.C.V.O., etc. In acceding to the request to write a Preface for this volume I am moved by the paramount need that all the budding citizens of our great Empire should be thoroughly acquainted with the part the Navy has played in building up the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Colonel Wood has endeavored to make plain, in a stirring and attractive manner, the value of Britain's Sea-Power. To read his Flag and Fleet will ensure that

Thousands and thousands of years ago a naked savage in southern Asia found that he could climb about quite safely on a floating log. One day another savage found that floating down stream on a log was very much easier than working his way through the woods. This taught him the first advantage of sea-power, which is, that you can often go better by water than land. Then a third savage with a turn for trying new things found out what every lumberjack and punter knows, that you need a pole if you w

Just as Germany tried to win the overlordship of the world in this twentieth century so Spain tried in the sixteenth; and just as the Royal Navy was the chief, though by no means the biggest, force that has won the whole world's freedom from the Germans now, so the Royal Navy was the chief force that won world-freedom from the Spaniards then. Spaniards and Portuguese, who often employed Italian seamen, were the first to begin taking oversea empires. They gained footholds in places as far apart a

The Dutch Wars, which lasted off and on for fifty years (1623-1673), were caused by rivalry in oversea trade. In the sixteenth century the Dutch and English had joined forces against the Portuguese, who had tried to keep them out of the East Indies altogether. But when once the Portuguese were beaten the allies fell out among themselves, the Dutch got the upper hand, and, in 1623, killed off the English traders at Amboyna, one of the Moluccas. War did not come for many years. But there was alway

In Chapter VI we saw how French and English once fought a Hundred Years War to decide the French possession of all the land of France, and how the French, having the greater army, won. Now, in these next seven chapters we shall learn how they fought another Hundred Years War to decide the command of the sea, and how the English, grown into a British Empire and having the greater navy, won in their turn. Both victories proved to be for the best. France and England both gained by the first war; be

Germany made 1914 a year of blood; but let us remember it as also being the hundredth year of peace between the British, Americans, and French, those three great peoples who will, we hope, go on as friends henceforward, leading the world ever closer to the glorious goal of true democracy: that happier time when every boy and girl shall have at least the chance to learn the sacred trust of all self-government, and when most men and women shall have learnt this lesson well enough to use their vote