Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/83

Rh English nation was almost uniquely simple in its structure. It is that which makes English history the epic story that it is until the histories of Scotland and Ireland come to confuse their currents with it. One fertile plain between the Mountains of the west and north and the Narrow Seas to the east and south, a people of farmers, a single king, a single parliament, a tidal river, a single great city for central market and port—those are the elements on which the England was built whose warning beacons blazed on the hill-tops from Plymouth to Berwick-on-Tweed, in that night of Elizabeth's reign when the Spanish Armada had entered the Channel. On a smaller scale, Latium, the Tiber, the City, the Senate, and the People of Rome once presented a similar unity and a similar executive strength. The real base historically of British sea-power was our English plain—fertile and detached; coal and iron from round the borders of the plain have been added in later times. The white ensign of the Royal Navy is with some historic justice the flag of St. George, with a 'difference' for the minor partners.

Every characteristic of sea-power may be studied in British history during the last three centuries, but the home-base,