neither to British nor to French interests that a war between England and France should be brought on by the devices of Germany. The two Powers, England and France, might at least consider their attitude in view of a German attack on either. But if there is to be co-operation between them, England must be ready to give France the support of a powerful army, as well as of her fleet; France must be ready to meet the attack of Germany on the Continent. Will either Power accept such conditions? And is it possible for France to enter into a close understanding with England, without giving Russia, whose policy of recent years has been for all practical purposes directed by the occult influence of Germany, grave reason for complaint? Alliances are not like clothes, lightly changed, seeing that policy and military and naval dispositions are based upon them; and French security is intimately bound up with the Russian alliance. Still, it would be an absurd anomaly for two Powers to remain at arm's length, when they wish one another well; when neither of them wants to see the other greatly weakened in the interests of a dangerous rival; and when neither of them has now any serious cause of conflict with the other. The aggressiveness of Germany has radically modified the problems which confront European statesmen, and shaken the Triple Alliance to its very foundations.

Thus there are serious difficulties in the way of an AngloFrench alliance, and it would be dangerous to presume too much on the present entente which may go the way of many predecessors. The other possible ally, the United States, cannot be seriously considered under present conditions.

If, however, the various colonies of the British Empire did their fair share of the work of Imperial defence, we should have genuine allies, and the problem would be a much less serious one. But neither Canada nor Australia contributes to any calculable extent to the navy or army. In Australia, with a revenue of £35,000,000, less than a million is spent on defence, though if the Australian paid on the same scale as the Englishman, he would contribute about £16,000,000 to the army and navy; if on the same scale as the Japanese, £10,000,000. Instead, he spends the money on old-age pensions, unproductive works, unemployed and the like, depending entirely for his security on the heavily taxed Englishman. But for the British Navy, Australia would be either a Japanese or a German appanage; it is believed that support in the direction of action against Australia was one of the allurements offered by Russia to Japan and refused by Japan when Russia was angling for the Japanese alliance in

1901. The present state of affairs is not business, and in the long run its results threaten to be disastrous to the Colonies themselves.

DISARMAMENT.-The necessity of limiting the expenditure on armaments because of our poverty is now the theme of the Opposition in this country, though only a few months ago this very Opposition was for its own partisan purposes pretending that never was British prosperity so great, never were all classes richer and happier. But as it is to-day a question of maintaining the navy and the national existence, it is pretended that England is "exhausted" by her outlay on "bloated armaments," and that the time has come to effect some international agreement, tending to the reduction of this outlay. It will be observed that the writers who advocate this idea are with few exceptions anti-national and cosmopolitan in sympathy; many of them of foreign descent, and, so far as I can discover, ignorant of naval history. There is no sign that any of them has examined the classical dissertation on disarmament contained in Stoffel's famous Rapports Militaires, when, on the eve of 1870, he besought the French nation in vain to indulge in no such chimeras.

What are the objects of those who call for disarmament, and on what basis is disarmament to be effected? The predominance of England at sea must be maintained, unless this country is going to commit suicide. But the whole object of the recent German naval proposals and of the new programme is to destroy England's predominance. Therefore it may safely be said that Germany will never consent to any scheme which places her naval forces permanently below those of England, and to put such a proposal before her will be coming dangerously near the despatch of an ultimatum. Appeals direct or indirect to her and to Russia in 1899 (by Lord Goschen) and in 1904 (by Lord Selborne) have only resulted in further programmes. And the technical difficulties in the way of any limitation of naval armaments are stupendous. If a money basis is selected, what allowance is to be made for the indirect tax of compulsory service, which enables Germany to obtain her men at one-fifth of the cost of the British bluejacket? If a determinate number of units is to be the base, what a field for eternal wrangles and disputes, as to the size, character and real qualities of those units! We should have battleships of 25,000 tons; cruisers which were battleships in everything but name; destroyers which were cruisers, and so forth. Even with a fixed

*This has been denied in the Quarterly Review, but there is good authority for it all the same.

standard of units, any Power could gain an advantage by spending on gunnery what it would otherwise have spent on new ships, and so ensuring its gunners hitting the target with every shot at enormous ranges. The menace to peace arising from such a state of affairs would be just as great as that caused to-day by the open and undisguised competition between the Great Powers of the world.

Nor must it be forgotten that it is Germany's object to make England feel the strain; or that through her armaments she is able virtually to impose a severe tax on British industry, since expenditure on armaments is ultimately supported by industry. Her own armaments cost her only 16s. per head, owing to compulsory service, which, in the belief of Germans, is the mainspring of German greatness, and a source of strength, not of weakness. British armaments cost 32s. per head of the British population, and are still incomparably below the German in efficiency, while we gain no such advantage as the German obtains, from the fact that the German youth is given physical culture, prevented from premature marriage, taught obedience, duty and discipline, and made to feel pride in the nation. Indeed, it may be said in Stoffel's words, that armaments are a positive economic advantage to Germany, "en en faisant la nation la plus eclairée et la plus disciplinée de l'Europe." Germany and Japan are the types of the great modern state in Europe and Asia; while the power of England and her colonies rests on precarious foundations, marked as it is at every point by the delegation of their primary duties by whole communities or classes of the community to others.

It

Again, the idea of disarmament is based upon a complete misreading of human nature. It rests upon a pure materialism, which is out of touch with our times. It assumes that the first duty of man is to assure his comfort and ease and not to uphold the right. Yet, in the words of that great thinker, Dr. Martineau, "the reverence for human life is carried to an immoral idolatry when it is held more sacred than justice or right.... A commonwealth which regards the life of man more than the equities of God, appears to be unfaithful to its functions." would tend inevitably to the weakening of purpose and the degradation of character, whence no real movement towards it is to be marked amongst the strenuous and progressive races of Europe. It supposes the abolition of the oldest, profoundest and strongest instinct in man-the competitive impulse-on which our modern civilisation is based, and from which its greatest results proceed. It is only two months since in Australia a Royal Commission issued a report fraught with warning to our race, pointing out some of the results which have fol

lowed in New South Wales from the well-meaning attempt to eliminate or to limit competition in the industrial sphere. Among them are "defective health, defective morals and defective character," three counts which together spell the decline and fall of the race. Like Socialism, disarmament, if practically realised, can only be so as the concomitant of universal stagnation. No single Power can disarm unless it is prepared to meet the fate of China and to be marched over or partitioned by the strong.

Nor, when we are told that the cost of armaments in this country has greatly increased of recent years, can it be forgotten that increasing expenditure is one of the features of progressive life. The plea is readily enough raised by the critics of our navy, when it is a matter of a municipality spending enormous sums in directions where any adequate return is doubtful. The following figures give side by side the Navy and Civil Service Estimates (the latter of which includes the Imperial outlay on education) and the local expenditure for various years in millions of pounds :

The local expenditure for 1902 is not as yet available, but

have fully kept

These figures,

there is reason to think that it will be found to pace with the increase in outlay on the Navy. which are taken from the various Statistical Abstracts, show that since 1867 the Civil Service Estimates and the local expenditure have increased much more rapidly than the outlay on the Navy, and suggest that the unprogressiveness of our Naval expenditure between 1867 and 1880 was due simply to the neglect by our Governments of national defence and to the fact that Germany and France during this period could think of nothing but their armies.

It is a favourite argument of the ignorant, especially of those who follow in the path of Cobden, that armies and armaments are unproductive. Do these people, then, really consider security of no importance? What is the function of insurance? Is the man mad who insures his property and life, or he who fails to make no such provision for possible dangers ? Is the investor a lunatic who prefers Consols or Prussian 3 per cents. to the 10 per cent. of a Whitaker Wright company? Does the investor in Consols "throw away" an annual 7 per cent., or pay that amount for security? Capital, on which modern civilisation depends, has two necessities, if it is to be plentiful and cheap-security of life and property and security

of credit. The first is only obtained where there is an adequate force to maintain order and law and to prevent external meddling with the State. The second condition ultimately depends upon the realisation of the first. The true economic justification of armaments is that their existence renders the State independent of any external will and enables the citizen to make his plans tranquilly for the morrow, certain that he will not be compelled to contribute the fruits of his efforts to a foreign conqueror, and with a reasonable hope that the mere existence of those armaments will render war unlikely. Within the past

three months the strength of her Navy has brought England through a very dangerous international crisis with only a trifling fall in the value of British securities, when, if that Navy had been weak, war would have been probable and Consols might well have stood where they did in 1797, at 73, and the rate of interest have been 6 to 10 per cent. as then. The meaning of this to the industrial community need not be enlarged upon; it will be obvious to any man of affairs.

Disarmament is therefore economically dangerous and the mere dream of short-sighted sentimentalists, impracticable under existing world-conditions.

H. W. WILSON.

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF POINTS ASSIGNED TO EACH SHIP.