Page:The empire and the century.djvu/339

 a young frog's foot Through the network of arteries and veins flow never-ending processions of corpuscles, swimming in a colourless stream, one following another, two little ones amicably progressing side by side, the big, long ones turning endways to pass the narrowest channels. If the Man in the Moon really existed, and had sufficiently powerful binoculars, he would witness a similar phenomenon on the earth's oceans. He would see long lines of great ships steaming on night and day from one port to another, then turning, and steaming back again to the point of departure. We know that the circulation of the blood is an essential condition of animal life; if it were stopped, there would be an end of the frog. And so the Man in the Moon would probably conclude that he had before his eyes evidence of the working of a living organization on a vast scale. We know that if ever the great ships ceased to throb on, under sun and stars, it would mean the end of the mightiest Empire in the world's history.

'Where would your Empire be without an army?' says my gallant friend, General A. 'And navy,' modestly adds—sailors are always modest—my equally gallant friend, Admiral B. 'If you come to that,' cries C., the millionaire cotton-spinner (we will suppose this discussion to take place in a club smoking-room)—'if you come to that, where would your army and navy be without the trade that pays for 'em?' Now, if I were appealed to, I should inquire of C. where trade would be without postal and telegraphic communications. The old type, the one-man Empire, was like the famous chess automaton, which beat and puzzled the players of that noble game, until one day a little man was dragged out of the machine, and the imposture was discovered. So, when Alexander or Cromwell died, or Napoleon was defeated, their elaborate governmental arrangements fell to pieces. In the immediate neighbourhood of the great man, and so far as imperfect communications permitted him to act promptly, there was a sort of unity of administration. Outside of that