Page:Great Britain and the Suez Canal.djvu/17

 shorter time, if no danger or impediment lay in their course. But if we were at war with a Mediterranean power, they would be exposed to such dangers in passing an enemy's shores through those narrow seas, they would be so much harassed by gunboats and torpedo-vessels issuing from the enemy's ports, that they would probably have to be placed under convoys, which would counteract in point of speed any advantage to be gained in going through the Canal. On the other hand, whilst we control the high seas, such swift and powerful transports would be dangerous to follow and difficult to capture in mid-ocean, where our cruisers would outnumber the cruisers of the enemy, and our ports of refuge would be nearer than theirs.

These arguments seem to me to have a conclusive bearing on our present position. It is not necessary for the protection of our commerce, it is not essential to our communication with India, that we should entangle ourselves in a partnership with any single State in Europe for the protection of peculiarly English interests. Surely the present Government were amply justified in hesitating to intervene in Egypt, in alliance with a single power, at any rate, before asking, in the first instance, for the help of a European concert. I hope that they will take the first opportunity of liberating themselves altogether from the false system engendered by the suspicious fears of their predecessors, by a timidity which led to alternate displays of rashness and weakness. Such partnerships can lead us in the future only where they have led us in the past, into positions which no Government, however able or well-disposed, can maintain with credit or escape from without either national misunderstandings or the sacrifice of British wealth and British lives. That which is really a European interest should be provided for by European concert. Our experience in the Crimea might have prevented the late Government from entering on such a course in conjunction with a country whose policy was, and still is, in a state of constant change and uncertainty. .