It is, indeed, of its nature a challenge to the rest of the world, but
if the reader will consider a moment he will see that it is a challenge
to which modern England, at any rate, is inexorably condemned. However
much such a position may clash with the temperament of chivalrous and
peaceable men--and it does clash with the temperament of many an English
statesman of the past and of the present--no one with a respect for his
country, or paying the common duty of allegiance to it, can compromise
upon the matter. It is here with England precisely as it has been with
all her parallels, the great oligarchic commercial commonwealths of the
past; she lives by the sea, and the closing of the sea would be to her
not inconvenience, but death.
It is, I think, this very sentiment that England can live only on
condition that the English fleet is supreme which has led England to use
that supremacy so sparingly. It is true to say that there has been no
force of so much superiority to its rivals as the British Navy which in
all history has been used for such purely defensive purposes as the
British Navy has been used during the present generation, and this
moderation I conceive to be due to a clear recognition that morally the
claim to supremacy at sea is a challenge which the great rival nations
must feel acutely, and which they have a right to feel acutely, and
which, therefore, must be softened in every possible way.
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