Japan. Thus the Dominion is almost as closely in touch with Asia as with Europe. Across her prairies and through her ports the Far West merges for the Englishman into the Far East, and by a shorter route than that by which the East has hitherto been reached. These ports, taken in conjunction with those of Australasia, Hong Kong, and our Pacific islands, give on the Pacific the same double base for naval support and supply which is the supreme advantage that the Empire enjoys over all other nations on the Atlantic. With the free use of Japanese ports, secured by alliance, the naval advantage becomes overwhelming.
In the momentous decision which British people have made in regard to this alliance, Canada's relation to the problem must have been a weighty factor. A country which links by its railway lines the naval bases of the Empire on the Atlantic with those on the Pacific; which can furnish abundant supplies of coal to both; and which has at the same time the capacity to make the Empire almost self-contained in the most essential elements of food-supply, means much to an ocean Power which must settle the balance of naval influence on the two great oceans. It infinitely increases the value to any other Power of the British alliance.
Facts such as these compel the belief that the Dominion must always remain the keystone of that great arch of outer Empire which has gradually grown up on the foundation of this ancient British monarchy—a foundation which has withstood the shocks of ten centuries of history, and seems to have grown stronger from all that it has withstood.
But other facts supplement those already stated. Under modern conditions of commerce and war, telegraphic routes are scarcely less important than lines of railway and steam communication. In this respect the relation of Canada to the Empire, and especially to the Pacific, as a through route of national communication is quite as important as in the other points hitherto referred to. Most of the Transatlantic cables now in
