If the resources of the present with their probable growth in the future are taken into account, Great Britain and the United States will appear as massing enormous naval and military forces in the Pacific. The preponderance of naval force will be probably on the side of the United States for very many years--since it is improbable that Great Britain will ever be able to detach any great proportion of her Fleet from European waters and her Pacific naval force will be comprised mainly of levies from Australia and New Zealand, and possibly Canada, India, and South Africa. The preponderance of military force will be probably on the side of Great Britain, taking into count the citizen armies of Australia and New Zealand (and possibly of Canada) and the great forces available in India. Complete harmony between Great Britain and the United States in the Pacific would thus give the hegemony of the ocean to the Anglo-Saxon race. Rivalry between them might lead to another result. In the natural course of events that "other result" might be Asiatic dominion in one form or another. These factors in Pacific rivalry will be discussed in detail in the following chapters. FOOTNOTES: [1] Since the above was written it is reported that the United States has taken possession of Palmyra Island--once a British possession--to the south of Honolulu, obviously for strategic purposes. CHAPTER II RUSSIA IN THE PACIFIC Russia, for generations the victim of Asia, when at last she had won to national greatness, was impelled by pressure from the West rather than by a sense of requital to turn back the tide of invasion. That pressure from the West was due to a misunderstanding in which Great Britain led the way, and which the late Lord Salisbury happily described when he stated that England "had backed the wrong horse" in opposing Russia and in aiding Turkey against her. Russia, because she broke Napoleon's career of victory by her power of resistance, a power which was founded on a formlessness of national life rather than a great military strength, was credited by Europe with a fabulous might. Properly understood, the successful Russian resistance to the greatest of modern captains was akin to that of an earthwork which absorbs the sharpest blows of artillery and remains unmoved, almost unharmed. But it was misinterpreted, and a mental conception formed of the Russian earthwork as a mobile, aggressive force eager to move forward and to overwhelm Europe. Russia's feat of beating back the tide of Napoleonic invasion was merely the triumph of a low biological type of national organism. Yet it inspired Europe with a mighty fear. The "Colossus of the North" came into being to haunt every Chancellery.