come of mere mistaken economics, but the result of intelligent preparation for war. It was that policy which enabled us to carry on wars on a large scale in Europe. In the days when all armies were hired, we hired not only the raw material of armies, but the finished article—the whole military strength of a statelike Prussia, and military genius of a Frederick.
All these measures, whose primary object was national defence, tended no less towards national prosperity, even though, at any particular moment, they may have seemed to restrict the freedom of economic development The navigation laws created British shipping. The desire to force exports led to the continuous concentration of thought upon the fostering and stimulating of new industries and the improvement of old ones, and thus laid the foundations of England's industrial greatness. The desire to secure the control of the raw materials of those industries, and to develop new and sure markets for their products, led to the acquisition of our Colonial Empire, and stimulated its development. It has often been said that the British Empire sprang up unconsciously, as a result of British trade, that our defence policy was based on our trade interests, and that our wars were the outcome of trade disputes. But it is at least equally true that British trade and the British Empire were created for the sake of national defence. It was from the desire to protect England—English liberty and English Protestantism—against the greater wealth and power of the Continental States, more especially France, that our statesmen looked abroad and ahead, and, in a far truer sense than Canning, called a new world into being to redress the balance of the old—a new world of colonial expansion, naval power, and industrial development.
In their actual conduct of war, no less than in their peace strategy, the clear grasp of our statesmen can be seen. No 'blue water' doctrinarianism, no theory of passive military defence, blinded them to the great fact that wars to be fought successfully must be fought
