THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1901.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11826, 2 December 1901, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1901.

It is exceedingly consoling to our national pride to be informed upon tic highest independent military authoritythat of the American Mahan—that foreign Governments regard the South African war as having strengthened and improved the military strength of our Empire. This has long been the unanimous opinion of the British world, even the Pro-Boer party being driven to decrying the " militarism" which has been everywhere excited. What is decried as "militarism" means, of course, nothing more nor less than a very active feeling that the capacity to defend our frontier and to protect ourselves against assault is imperatively called for unless we intend to be obliterated from the map of nations. As a matter of fact, it can hardly now be questioned that at least three of our devoted European allies—France, Germany and Russia— the outbreak of hostilities in South Africa with a fixed determination to act towards us according to the martial strength which we might manifest. To them the Boer was but a bell-thc-cat, of interest because he tested for the first time in forty-five years the ability of the British soldier to hold his own against men of his own colour, fighting with modern weapons and the advantage of position, of value because he tried, for the first time in nearly ninety years, the endurance and persistence of the "nation of shopkeepers." The Continental mob, ignorant of everything but the scare-lines of Anglophobic journals, sees nothing but that the whole strength of the greatest Empire in the world has hitherto failed to crush a mere handful of " Godfearing farmers." But the military experts who give the cue to statesmen hare made no such mistake. According to Captain Mahan, our Empire stands higher in the estimation of foreign Governments than before.

If Ladysmith had fallen, if Kimberley and Mafeking had gone down, if Buller had been swept away from the Tugela and if Methuen and French had not between them dammed the tide of Boer invasion Capewards, wc should unquestionably have had European complications clattering upon our shoulders as plentifully as we had at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A Napoleonic mind among our friends and neighbours might have

organised a great anti-British " combine" even as things were, but the smaller minds that dominate Europe to-day would take no risk's. If they lost the chance of winning the enormous stakes of armed intervention at least they avoided losing their own enormous contributions to the prize of victor}'. They waited, with true diplomatic wisdom, to see how Britain shaped herself, to watch how the British soldier acquitted himself. And they have seen that the man in khaki fights as stubbornly as ever did the red-coat, that England ct-.v still make without a murmur those stupendous sacrifices which broke the heart ot Napoleon, and ti at beneath all our Imperial mistakes and blundering there has been an intelligent grasp of the situation and a steady determination towards sound military reform. The mob may exaggerate the value of the earlier Boer successes, may ignore the difficulty of occupying the veldt against the guerilla, may forget the tremendous advantage which modern weapons give to those who can choose the battleground, but foreign Governments do not. Prospects of intervention began to fade when the men of Ladysmith clung grimly to their ill-chosen post, and the men with Buller attacked VilleboisMareuil's engineering masterpieces with a courage that no punishment could shake. They grew dim when that great stream of fighting-men poured into Africa. Thej died when our tacticians came to the front and when in six short months the Boer States that had aimed at South African dominion were humbled to the very dust. The mob may howl and shout, but the rulers know that they cannot afford to ignore or belittle a nation which has so uiicloubt.* ,ily manifested its power to fling upon any coast in the world half-a-million of such soldiers as those who starved with White and fought with Methuen and conquered with Roberts. Oftentimes we are disposed to grumble in true national fashion at the way in which the war drags on. But we may be very sure indeed that had our military standing been as good two years ago as it is to-day Kruger and Steyn would never have undertaken to drive the " rooinek" into the sea. It is rather remarkable that both the AngloSaxon nations have lately demonstrated their naval and military strength at the expense of comparatively small powers and in the presence of what have really been <£ armed neutralities," waiting and watching to spring upon them. Both British and Americans may anticipate as a result a few years of peace. That is our joint Anglo-Saxon reward for having fought sturdily, the length of our peace depending altogether upon thy opinion of our European and Asiatic neighbours as to the folly of attacking us.

Captain Mahan lays special stress upon the impression ■which has been produced upon foreign Governments by the entry of the colonies into the military arena. We are accustomed +o regard our own Imperial War Office as the peculiar model of how-hot-to-do-it, but it may lessen our criticism to remember hat the colonies of the Empire have been looked upon as her -weaknesses, not merely by Little Englanders, but by the shrewdest of foreign diplomats. Possibly these foreign gentlemen, whose own national experience of colonies has been invariably an unhappy one, were led by the polity of Little England Administrations to imagine that we were no better than their own helpless offspring. It has been openly and avowedly part of the military pVois of every inimical State—of wlnr.a France and Germany have posts very near at hand, while Russia has a railway outlet in Pacific watersthat in the evr-r.t of hostilities with Britain, her colonial ports would be seized by small but well-equipped expeditions. The ►South African war has changed all that. Foreign Governments have suddenly realised that instead of our colonial ports falling an easy prey to their raiders the moment the naval forces of the Empire were compelled to concentrate, every coastal city of the scattered colonies is a sally-port from which their every foreign possession would, be attacked and their every base of naval supply torn from them. Colonial forces are no longer despised and Continental military authorities understand even better than we do ourselves the practically limitless number of troops that we might put into the field. Enthusiastic naval men, who have adopted and adapted the proud maxim of Sparta and would exhaust every energy on the first line of defence, are sometimes disinclined to realise the value of the colonial Defence movement. Experts like Captain Mahan make no such mistake ; they see. and foreign Governments see with them, the unprecedented mobility which they give to the Imperial line of battle, that all unwittingly we have established vast and self-sustaining military settlements in every part of the world. The stronger in arms the British colonies become, the more complete their volunteering and their training, the more modern their equipment, so much the less willing must any foreign Government be to declare war upon the Empire. For the best guarantees-which ambitious States give to Peace are not in any way their fears of being defeated by enemies that stand solely upon the defensive, but their tears of losing all to an energetic enemy that can strike strenuously back.