The writer has fallen into the mistake which our General Sherman characterized as undue imagination concerning what “the man on the other side of the hill” might do; a quaint version of the first Napoleon’s warning against “making a picture to yourself.” The picture of Great Britain’s dangers is overdrawn; that to her enemies—“the full measure of the mischief we could do to a Continental nation”—is underdrawn. It would seem as if, in his apprehension, “the disastrous consequences[122] which would flow from even slight depredations by commerce destroyers on British shipping” could find no parallel in the results to a Continental trade from British cruisers. France or Germany, for example, shut off from the sea, can be supplied by rail from, say, Antwerp or Rotterdam; but it is apparently inconceivable that, in the contingency of a protracted naval war, the same ports might equally supply Great Britain by neutral ships. Alternate sea routes close, apparently automatically; only alternate land routes stay open. Thus undue weight is laid upon defensive motives, where the offensive requires the greater emphasis. The larger merchant tonnage of Great Britain involves a greater defensive element, yes; but are not defensive conditions favorably modified by her greater navy, and by her situation, with all her western ports open to the Atlantic, from Glasgow to Bristol and round to Southampton? And is not the station for such defense identical with the best for offense by maritime capture? The British vessels there occupy also a superior position for coal renewal; the difficulty of which for an enemy, threatening the Atlantic approaches to Great Britain, seems too largely discounted by imaginations preoccupied with hostile commerce destroyers. The concluding sentence of Lord Loreburn’s letter contains a warning familiar to military thought. “Great Britain will gain much from a change long and eagerly _desired_ by the great majority of other Powers.” The wish of a possible enemy is the beacon which suggests the shoal. The truth is, if the British Navy maintains superiority, it is to the interest of her enemies to have immunity from capture for “private property;” if it falls, it is to their interest to be able to capture. The inference is safe that probable enemies, if such there be, and if they entertain the wish asserted, do not expect shortly to destroy the British Navy.