But the world is 25,000 miles round, and the commerce of the Empire is upon every sea. The striking distance of a ship of war is 2000 miles, and practically every ship of war we have operates under the limitations imposed by the use of steam. The figures certainly give us the necessary data for calculating what naval bases are necessary for adequate naval strength. Surely Canada, resting on the North Atlantic and North Pacific; South Africa, commanding the passage around the Cape; and Australasia, in the centre of the vast breadth of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, are not merely useful, but, under the conditions which have been stated, essential. But when we have realized {65} that under modern conditions they are essential to widely extended sea power, we are in a position to understand the addition which they make to defensive strength. A nation which commands the great naval and coaling stations at these essential points could practically paralyze any enemy which sought to attack her, by simply closing the ports of coal supply to hostile ships. Let me ask the reader to turn to the map of the world which accompanies this book. In it an attempt has been made to emphasize, though not unduly, a few of the main facts connected with our national position. The chief routes of British commerce are indicated--the arteries along which flow the life-blood of the nation. On what is now the principal route to the East, that through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, we note the fortified naval and coaling stations in a connected chain: Gibraltar, Malta, Bombay, Trincomalee, Singapore, and Hong Kong. At each of these stations British ships find themselves under the shelter of strong fortifications. Most of them are practically impregnable, and are supplied with docks for the repair of ships. All are points of storage for coal. Besides these stations of primary importance there are subsidiary ports, Kurrachi, Colombo, Calcutta, and many others. Whether this remarkable hold on the greatest route of Eastern commerce is the outcome of a grasping militarism, or the natural result which arises from supreme commercial interest, may be judged from a {66} single fact. Of the 3800 steamships which passed through the Canal in 1891 seventy-eight out of every hundred were under the British flag, leaving only twenty-two divided among Frenchmen, Germans, Dutchmen, Austrians, Spaniards, Americans, and all the other nations of the world. Of the whole tonnage eighty-two per cent. was British. Follow, again, the alternative route to the East and South around Africa. Here we find Sierra Leone, St. Helena, Cape Town, and Mauritius at intervals singularly adapted to the necessities of steam navigation under conditions of either peace or war. Other nations occupy parts of Africa, but none have naval stations of corresponding strength.