Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/537

Rh is defended and the system of protectorates as applied to the defence of a land frontier. In both cases the main object is to keep clear an open space beyond and in front of the actual border-line. England does this for the land frontier by a belt of protected land which she throws forward in front of a weak border; and her assertion of exclusive jurisdiction over the belt of waters immediately surrounding her seacoasts is founded upon the same principle. We English are accustomed to consider ourselves secure under the guardianship of the sea; although, in fact, the safety comes not from the broad girdle of blue water, but from the strength and skill of the English navy that rides upon it. And for a nation that has not learnt the noble art of seamanship, no frontier is more exposed to attack, or harder to defend, than the seashore. The principle of defence, therefore, for both land and sea frontiers, is to stave off an enemy's advance by interposing a protected zone. If a stranger enters that zone he is at once challenged. If he persists, it is a hostile demonstration.

It would thus be a mistake to suppose that England's Asiatic land frontier is conterminous with her Asiatic possessions, that is, with the limits of the territory which she administers, and which is within the range of her Acts of Parliament. It is not, like the Canadian border, or the boundary between France and Germany, a mere geographical line over which an Englishman can step at once out of his own country into the jurisdiction of another sovereign state. The fron-