The vast magnitude of the Empire, and its dispersion in the various quarters of the globe, have hitherto oppressed the imagination of those charged with its defence. Vulnerability has seemed the natural concomitant of magnitude. The impression might have been correct fifty or seventy-five years ago; it is not so today. It seems a proposition fairly capable of demonstration that under the changed conditions of {63} modern communication and naval war the vast area of the Empire and the wide dispersion of its parts, so far from being a cause of weakness, are really elements, under proper organization, of a strength greater than any nation of present or past times has ever enjoyed. It is a strength, too, which particularly recommends itself to the national mind, since it is effective for defence rather than aggression. To understand how magnitude and diffusion may be sources of strength we must recall the fact that for all purposes of trade, intercourse, and naval power, the introduction of steam has re-created the world. Before Trafalgar was fought Nelson was able to keep the sea for months, the staying power of a ship of war depending almost entirely upon its supplies of food, water, and warlike stores. Now it has become chiefly a question of coal endurance. Removed from the means of renewing its supplies of coal, the most powerful ship afloat within a very limited number of days becomes a helpless hulk. 'The striking distance of a ship of war is now on an average two thousand miles,' are the words used by Lord Salisbury not long since to indicate the nature and extent of this change in the conditions of naval defence. What he means is, we may suppose, that when a modern ship of war has filled her bunkers with coal, she can go two thousand miles, do the work assigned her, and get safely back to her starting-place. High naval authorities have told me that Lord Salisbury's average is fixed at the outside limit. {64} 'Our fleet must be present in sufficient force to protect adequately the whole commerce of the Empire, wherever it is,' says the Secretary of the Admiralty in a last year's speech, and the press almost unanimously unites with Chambers of Commerce and other representative bodies in echoing the sentiment as a national resolution. In discussing a considerable event in naval construction in the beginning of the present year the _Times_ said: 'So far as human effort can attain its end, the country has now definitely resolved that the naval history of the future shall not be unworthy of its past.' It added: 'There is no finality to naval policy. ... Its only sound basis is not the cost of the fleet in the abstract, but a rational estimate of the conditions of naval defence at sea.'