Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/86

74 London and available for the maintenance of power on and over the seas. It was a proud and lucrative position, and seemed so secure that the mid-Victorian folk thought it almost in the natural order of things that insular Britain should rule the seas. We were, perhaps, not quite a popular people in the rest of the world; our position behind a Channel seemed an unfair advantage. But warships cannot navigate the mountains, and since the French wars of the Plantagenets we have not sought to make permanent European conquests, so that, on the whole, we may hope that the verdict of foreign historians on our Britain of the nineteenth century may resemble that of the famous schoolboy who described his headmaster as 'a beast, but a just beast.'

Perhaps the most remarkable outcome of British sea-power was the position in the Indian Ocean during the generation before the War. The British 'Raj' in India depended on support from the sea, yet on all the waters between the Cape of Good Hope, India, and Australia, there was habitually no British battle-ship or even first-class cruiser. In effect, the Indian Ocean was a 'closed sea.' Britain owned or 'protected' most of the coast lines, and the remaining frontages were