In New Zealand I found among politicians, journalists, and the public generally, a remarkable consensus of opinion that the circumstances of that colony would always compel it to regard questions of national defence and consolidation from its own point of view, and in a large measure independently of Australia. Facts justify this attitude. New Zealand is 1000 miles long and nowhere more than 150 broad. Cut in two by a broad strait and penetrated by numerous bays and inlets, it has 3000 miles of coast line, and is therefore more exposed from a naval point of view than any other equally fertile, wealthy, and thinly settled country in the world. That it is an outlying part of Australia is an illusion left on many minds from a casual glance at small maps of the Southern Hemisphere, but the illusion vanishes the moment we visit the country or consider the facts. Twelve hundred miles of open sea separate it from Australia. The trade between the two is growing, but it is insignificant compared with the flood of commerce which pours from each towards Britain. The similarity of production will probably make this a permanent condition, save when drought compels Australia to look to New Zealand for food supplies. Britain is New Zealand's one great market, and it has become a more steady and reliable market from the means which have been devised to transfer the perishable produce of New Zealand farms to the {227} British consumer. Meanwhile, in her isolated position only naval power can give the colony adequate defence. The states of Australia can give effective support to each other--they cannot give it to New Zealand until they possess a fleet sufficient to command the Southern seas, and such a fleet they will not possess at any time within the range of present political calculation. Among reflective men in New Zealand one finds no readiness to believe that geographical isolation could be relied upon for giving military security, an idea which has considerable vogue in parts of Australia. 'I see that the tendency of enterprize and science is every year more to annihilate space, and space will be annihilated for purposes of war as well as peace, and the distance of the colonies from those who may attack them every year becomes less and less of a protection to them.' These words of Lord Salisbury express not inaccurately, I think, the prevailing thought of all serious politicans in New Zealand in regard to their country. The feeling is strengthened by a further consideration. New Zealand has already a good deal of trade with the scattered islands of the Pacific. This trade is likely to have a large development as time goes on. At any rate New Zealanders have formed a very definite ambition to acquire a large commercial connection and powerful influence in the Pacific, an ambition which can scarcely be realized unless its commercial interests have adequate naval support.