Alterations had always occurred in the power balances to produce instability and often war. “What made war inevitable,” Thucydides wrote in The Peleponnesian War, “was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.”15 But by the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the...
Nor would one battle, or a week’s or a month’s fighting, decide the issue. It would be decided by which side could endure the longer; by whether the stamina and strength of purpose of the crews of the Allied escort vessels and aircraft, watching and listening all the time for the hidden enemy, ou...