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 and through the fostering of industry—subserve the purposes of national development, and in the last generation has reaped the fruits of her policy in an expansion of national strength, with which our expansion in recent times can bear no comparison. Russia, too, is gradually becoming a modern State, and though internal misgovernment and disastrous wars abroad may retard, yet they cannot in the long-run check her economic development, or the growth of her power. The United States after a long period, during which all its energies were turned inwards, are now looking without, and entering into the competition of the world not only as an industrial, but also as a military and naval power. With all these States industrial development has led to the desire to control markets and the sources of raw materials—in other words, to a policy of expansion. That same industrial development has provided them with the wealth which makes that expansion possible, which enables them to maintain great armies and build great fleets. We have gradually come back to the situation of two centuries ago; only now what is threatened is, not so much England as the British Empire as a whole, and England herself mainly in so far as she is dependent on the Empire and on her trade for holding her own. The new danger can only be met in the same spirit as the old. No army reorganizations or naval schemes, no mere increases of our defence budgets will permanently solve it. We must go back to the old view, and remember that defence is an essential part of the national life, a thing which must be kept in mind in everything that we do or leave undone, a part to which every other must, in a

sense, be subordinated for the development of the whole. With this view before us, let us now consider what the defence of the British Empire involves. To do this we must first have regard to its extent and position, to the distribution, total volume, and economic strength of its population on the one hand, and on the other to the position of its principal rivals. The British