THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY. AUGUST 22, 1908. WHAT THE NAVY MEANS TO BRITAIN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9173, 22 August 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY. AUGUST 22, 1908. WHAT THE NAVY MEANS TO BRITAIN.

The one political disadvantage of relying exclusively upon sea-power is that in time of peace it is difficult and almost impossible to bring home to the democratic imagination a vivid sinse of the real aspect and function of navies. In India one of our dangers is, that hardly one native in 20,000 has ever seen a British soldier or come into contact with any solid evidence of the reserve power of the British Raj. At Home there are large numbers of citizens who have never seen a single warship, and the vast majority of the King's subjects at Home have never seen a squadron. Attached as they are to the fleet, resolute as they are to maintain, at any hazard, our maritime predominance, they do not realise, with that vivid and intimate sens? of reality which belongs to personal experience alone, the nature of sea-power. Their imagination suggests pictures of it, but it is beyond the pale of their actual knowledge. It is different upon the Continent. There, when the

autton is touched and "kriegmobil," jr its equivalent in aiy language, ifi [lashed through the land, the frontier may be passed by an enemy at any moment, and war in all its tremendous violence may come upon a peaceful civilisation as a summer thunderstorm might burst over London. Frum every town and village, by every railway, troop 3 pour towards the scene of conflict. Every thing is put to the hazard, and at ones. In tirrK'

of peace' it is not possible for the democracy in Great Britain to have the same sense of definite and immediate contact with the magnificent service upon which depend their prosperity, political liberty, and national existence itself. This is the supreme benefit the people of Graat Britain receive from the fieet, that it has prevented them from experiencing the reality or realising even remotely

the meaning of war at their own doors. For centuries no hostile force has been able to threaten seriously our internal peace. We won the Empire of the world. Armies fought for us or against us on every continent. Fleets clashed on every sea. But at Home political discussion, commercial activity, went on as before. If the apparently impossible occurred at last, and irretrievable disaster overtook U3 at sea, a sense of the truth

would be forced upon our minds too late by a succession of grim processes. There wouli be a commercial panic such as no society has known. Enterprise would contract, and employment would diminish. At the same moment would occur an appalling rise in prices, spreading l : suffering, misery, and starvatio i throughout the land. But all that would be no more than the first stage. W\th the next phase would come the falling away cf friends and the massing together of enemies, and then at last by the admission of all men not only would invasion bepossible,but it would be inevitable and overwhelming. England would be attacked upon her own soil at last, and smitten to the dust. She would know what it was to be under the heel of a foreign conqueror. She would have to cede her possessions and ha-'e to agree to limit her fleets. Our Empire would be [shattered for ever; our glory for ever fallen; our name for ever shamed. We should be left shorn of dominion and loaded with debt and disabilities that would prevent us from ever riing again. i