Page:The empire and the century.djvu/238

 steamers as calculated to strike a vital blow at our naval supremacy. The Admiralty Committee on manning, in 1858, discovered that future wars would still be fought under masts and sails, as the supply of coal would not be enough for a steam war. Cardiff alone exports in a year more than the navy uses in thirty years. Battleships fell in the estimation of all but the historical school, and, therefore, tended to be neglected. The powerful influence of the aged Duke of Wellington was used in favour of shore preparations for defence, and it was inevitable that the War Office should overlap naval functions by sedentary defences to resist invasion or coastal attacks. The military forces became less and less mobile, losing altogether the amphibious power, conferred by maritime strength, of being able to choose their striking point, or to assist the navy to capture ships protected by fortifications. In the House of Commons these considerations are seldom alluded to, for the practice is to forbid references to the navy and army estimates, and vice versa, while only last session £50,000,000 was voted under the guillotine rule, without any discussion at all, in the space of one minute.

In the strategical wilderness in which we wandered we worshipped many strange gods, whose costly tabernacles are to be found dispersed over the Empire. The fortifications of the dockyards and of Dover cost £12,000,000; and those at Bermuda have been described on the highest authority to be monuments of misapplied ingenuity. The evidence everywhere of worship of bricks and mortar, such as the Alderney Breakwater, Wei-Hai-Wei, the budding scheme of Rosyth Dockyard, and deserted 'tabernacles,' such as Halifax, Jamaica, Esquimalt, and Trincomalee Dockyards, afford matter enough to the curious student of the strange worship. The erroneous conclusions of this school as to the ability of the Russian Armada to reach the Far East, or to steam at all, unless the ships were docked, shows how strongly the idea of bases, coaling-stations, and docks had possessed their minds. Very typical of the priesthood set up by these