DECAY OF THE EMPIRE.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 506, 7 April 1880, Page 3

DECAY OF THE EMPIRE.

One device for frightening timid voters in the election turmoil at Home is worked with amusing skill by that gloomily prophetic journal, the Pall Mall Gazette. It complains . that the nation shuts its eyes to the fact that the untrained levies have ceased to count in modern warfare, and experience goes to show that great masses of men skillfully handled are an absolute necessity if any country is to hold its own on land. With Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Russia, even Spain and Roumania, armed to the teeth, possessed all of them of a system of military service which English statesmen refuse to adopt or to find a substitute for, the British army holds a very different position from what it did in ISIS or even in 18G6. Even the very enumeration of forces show the difference; tor who, twenty or thirty years ago, would ha ve thought of giving consideration to Italy or Spain ? Yet to-day the first-named country is an element of disturbance the more in an already troubled medley; not tbe less so 'because she lias worked hard to have a powerful fleet, and at this moment in conjunction with one other country, might occasion England grave embarassment for a tune. France and Italy hold a position in tbe Mediterranean Sea such as no other two Powers have held in this century.