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IMPERIAL DEFENCE. power which has command of the sea, dissemination of force within reasonable limits is advisable. Convenient harbours for coaling, etc., in all parts of the world are indispensable to attacks on a commerce so widely distributed as that of the British Empire. Deprive the enemy of these, and his attacks on commerce are to a great extent rendered impossible; but without some dissemination of force such a policy cannot be carried out.

Mr. Shaw Lefevre said in the House of Commons on the 7th of May, 1889:—

'France has greatly increased her empire, not only in China and Tonquin, but in Africa, and has extended her interests in other parts of the world; and in the event of a war with this country all these interests would be jeopardised, and in a very short time France would be cut off from her communication with all her outlying dependencies in different parts of the world.'

When we hear that the French have occupied the Kerguelen Islands, St. Paul and Amsterdam which, by the way, are marked as British possessions in most English maps or that the United States contemplates the annexation of the Sandwich Islands, it should not give us dissatisfaction. Such acquisitions only increase the vulnerability of states whom we are practically powerless to injure in their own territory.

In view of the military forces now maintained by Continental powers under a system of conscription, extended operations on the Continent are no longer conceivable. The part which the British Army can play in a war with a first-class power is only a secondary one, except in the cases of war with Russia or the United States. Though secondary, it is still important. The 27