An insular Power, largely dependent on sea-borne food supplies and raw materials for its industries--a Power which governs an empire in the East, which has dependencies scattered in every sea, which is politically united with immense but sparsely peopled dominions in the four quarters of the globe--must keep command of the sea. If that supremacy were once lost the British Empire, as an empire, would come to an end. Its early dissolution would be inevitable. Therefore it is true enough to say that if the German Alliance--or any other alliance--were to win a decisive naval victory against Britain, it would end the war completely and effectively so far as we were concerned. {268} But the converse is not the case, and for obvious reasons. In a contest with a continental enemy who conquers on land, while we win victory after victory at sea, the result will not be a settlement in our favour, but a drawn issue. And the draw will be to his advantage, not our own. For having overthrown the balance of power by reason of his successful campaign and invasions, he will then be free to concentrate his whole energies upon wresting away naval supremacy from the British Empire. In time the Sea Power which is only a Sea Power will be overborne with numbers, and finally worsted by the victorious Land Power. For how is it possible to fight with one hand against an enemy with two hands? The fleets of Europe which at last must be combined against us, if we allow any rival to obtain a European predominance, are too heavy odds. German preparations alone were already causing us grave anxiety nearly three years before the Agadir crisis occurred. How then could we hope to build against the whole of Europe? Or even against half of Europe, if the other half remained coldly neutral? [1] In all about 160,000 men, of whom some 25,000 were non-combatants. [2] Such, for instance, as the fact that the time-table of German mobilisation appeared to be somewhat more rapid than that of the French, and much more so than that of the Russians. [3] The first Balkan war broke out in the autumn of 1912. [4] Russia had anxieties of her own with regard to the intentions of Roumania, of Turkey in Persia and the Caucasus, and of China and Japan in the Far East. [5] These calculations were worked out in various ways, but the net results arrived at were always substantially the same. In view of the fact that the main conclusions have been amply proved by the results of the present war, it does not seem worth while to weary the reader with more sums in arithmetic than are absolutely necessary. [6] Colonel Seely at Heanor, April 26, 1913.