EMPIRE STRENGTH.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15309, 9 August 1923, Page 9

EMPIRE STRENGTH.

BASIS OF FUTURE PEACE. IF THERE WERE NO SEA. The wonders of yesterday are the commonplace of to-morrow. We have become so familiar with the marvels worked by the steamship, the cable, and wireless telegraphy that, we fail to realise what we owe to them in the present sfafre of the evolution of the British Empire, or to appreciate the promise for the future advantage of the benefits which they offer, writes Mr Archibald Ilurd in the London Daily Telegraph. How many of the representatives of the British peoples who will be meeting at the Imperial Conference in London this autumn will apprehend that, if at the creation the greater part of the earth's surface had not been flooded with water the dream of such a commonwealth of free peoples as exists to-day would never have entered men's mlinds; and df the marine steam engine had not, been developed, to be followed by the laying of cables and the discovery of wireless telegraphy, that dream must have remained unrealised. For by no extension of railways could the Empire have been linked together for the purposes of commerce, defence, and political stability. The British League of Nations has becomie a commonplace, and we seldom pause to consider the foundations upon which' every hope for the years to come rests. What has been the sequence of events? From the earliest dawn of civilisation, when man shaped boats out of the trunks of trees, civilisation marched from the river or the sea, inland; it always started at the water's edge. For many centuries humanity was split up into a series of little unrelated worlds, each community in large measure divorced from its nearest neighbour because there were no means of communication. For thousands of years men were under the restrictive handicap imposed upon them by the difficulty of moving about either on land or by sea. With the advent of the sailing shlin, oversea exploration, and even oversea settlement became possible. The caravan, the carrier's cart, and the conch seemed for hundred's of years to represent the ultimate phase of man's facilities of communication on land. Under that dispensation no such commonwealth of free peoples as exist to-day, paying allegiance to one throne, could have existed. A Maritime Empire. The British Empire is incurably maritime: nor is that all, it is the creation af the steamship, which day by day and mrmth by month is weaving the destiny of the British peoples the steam-driven Royal Navy standing guard in every sea and ocean over the ships of commerce. It is a fact which is often forgotten that the British Empire is vorv voung. In any real sense of the term, it had no existence when the Victory was launched at Chatham Dookarcl 158 years ago. Between the down of the golden age of Queen Elizabeth and the latter part of the eighteenth century we had picked up a few overseas possessions. But when Nelson died the creation of the British Empire as we know it to-day was still the achievement, the unplanned and unmethodical achievement,, of the future. It is true that Newfoundland for centuries had been nominally British; we had brought under our sway a number of West Indian islands; but Canada, though it was under the British flag, was little more than a vast waste, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific for a distance of 3000 miles, and a few settlers were fighting for a bare subsistence in New South Wales and in Tasmania. When Nelson paid the full price of his devotion to his country, he had, and could have, no conception of the British Empire as we know it to-day.

'" The Advent of the Steamship. It was only with the. coming of the steamship, which annihilated distance and contracted the seas and oceans of ■the world, that men began to realise that it was possible to create a world association of British peoples. There are men and women still alive who can recall the dismal prophecies which were indulged in before the marine steam engine, in ships of commerce as well as in ships of war, had asserted its dominion over she great water spaoes of the world. The ripe fruit was in no long time to drop from the parent tree. Few contemporaries realised the mission which the marine steam engine was to fulfil; though some shipowners welcomed its advent the'nation generally-regarded it with suspicion, and even with antagonism. From the time of the Norman conquest men had travelled in ships propelled cither by oars or sails, and any change was regarded with fear. Down almost to the accession of Queen Victoria the Sea Lords of the Admiralty, men who had pushed out the frontiers of this island people, would not even permit a steam packet to carry the mails between Malta and the lonian Isles "They felt it their bounden duly, upon national and professional ground, to discourage to the utmost of their ability 'the employment of steam vessels, as they considered that the introduction of steam was calculated to strike a fatal blow to naval supremcy of the Empire." These fine old isailors must not bo regarded as opposing their will to the will of the nation. Oh the contrary, they were probably expressing the views held by the majority of the people of this country. But if their fears had prevailed and the development of the marine steam engine had been arrested, it is certain beyond pcradvenlure that the British Empire would never have survived the storms and stresess of the past hundred years. The Meaning of Sea-Power. In process of time wo have reached a new conception of what sea-power means. In Nelson's day this compound world had not even been coined. It is, indeed, a comparatively modern invention, with which Mahan made the world familiar. It gradually acquired a limited signiuence. It was thought to mean fleets of war, well-equipped and well-manned, and ready to go anywhere and do anything, in accordance with the dictates of national policy. When men spoke of sea-power they thought in Nelson's phrase of battleships as the best of all 'ncgotiatiors": "they always speak to be understood and generally gain their point: their arguments carry conviction to the breasts of our enemies." We in these later days are reaching a now and fuller appreciation or what sea-power really means '.o us as the citizens of n world npnrl from the rest of humanity, villi a common language common lilcraluro, and political anil social ideals which are peculiarly our birthright. When we speak of seapower to-day wc think not of battleships only, but also of ships of commerce. Sea-Power signifies the power which wc can extracl from (he sea. Military power, it may be, but also political economic, and social power. "The word refers not to ships of war merely, or to ship 1 -; of commerce. T! implies nnl exclusively the skill of Ihe seamen, or the strength of Ihe vessels in which Ihey sail. These are Ihe

elements of sea-power, and we, mixing ihese elements with the Cod-given instinct which we have inherited from our forefathers, have become Ihe seaenrrinrs and Ihe sea-defenders of the world." The accumulated events of our his-

tory during the past century, and the dim shadows which Ho across the future, command us to be faithful to our trust in sea-power in all its manifestations if we would preserve, in association with our partners in the Commonwealth, the heritage which has come down to us. If we have reached new conceptions of Empire we owe it, in the main, to the re-con-quest or the seas by the stcam-drivcfi vessel.

If there wore, no seas there could assuredly be no British Empire, and if (he seas were not all one, the unity of that Empire could not be preserved. The sea speaks of. freedom, and all that it connotes in the lives of men. whether by the domestic hearth, in the council chamber, in the markct-plaee, or in the national mart. The sea is "the great fish-pond" from which we draw the elements which will go to the building up of the Empire of the future.