time goes on, these will be seen more and more to be hostages given to peace. These colonies are in the main peopled by alien races, who may be supposed to be not unwilling to seize any opportunity afforded them by the absorption of their possessors in domestic affrays. Besides, if Bismarck could defend himself by moving against England in Egypt, so conversely may England, with her superior influence abroad, do the same against any continental power desirous of breaking bounds at home.
The fifth and last resource of England in the outer world is the one most pregnant with power for the future. Under the stress of the European danger, and of the vast weight imposed upon us by the growth of European armaments, we have been obliged, as we all know, to draw back upon ourselves, and to urge the Dominions to relieve us to some degree of the burden of their defence. The military ideal now aimed at is that, in addition to the expeditionary force to act at a distance in case of necessity, there should be "a far-flung line of local defence," as Lord Haldane has termed it, maintained by each nation within the empire, organised as far as possible upon one pattern, and regulated by one school of thought in the shape of a General Staff. Similar principles are to apply to the naval reorganisation. That this ideal, however imperfectly executed at present, exists at all, is due in the main to the apprehensions excited throughout the world by the lengthening
