We continually talk as though carrying trade were in some special sense the result of the growth of a great navy, but Norway has a carrying trade which, relatively to her population, is nearly three times as great as Britain's, and the same reasons which would make it impossible for another nation to confiscate the gold reserve of the Bank of England would make it impossible for another nation to confiscate British shipping on the morrow of a British naval defeat. In what way can her carrying trade or any other trade be said to depend upon military power? As I write these lines there comes to my notice a series of articles in the London _Daily Mail_, written by Mr. F.A. McKenzie, explaining how it is that England is losing the trade of Canada. In one article he quotes a number of Canadian merchants: "We buy very little direct from England," said Mr. Harry McGee, one of the vice-presidents of the company, in answer to my questions. "We keep a staff in London of twenty, supervising our European purchases, but the orders go mostly to France, Germany, and Switzerland, and not to England." And in a further article he notes that many orders are going to Belgium. Now the question arises: What more can a navy do that it has not done for England in Canada? And yet the trade goes to Switzerland and Belgium. Is England going to protect herself against the commercial "aggression" of Switzerland by building a dozen more _Dreadnoughts_? Suppose she could conquer Switzerland and Belgium with her _Dreadnoughts_, would not the trade of Switzerland and Belgium go on all the same? Her arms have brought her Canada--but no monopoly of the Canadian orders, which go, in part, to Switzerland. If the traders of little nations can snap their fingers at the great war lords, why do British traders need _Dreadnoughts_? If Swiss commercial prosperity is secure from the aggression of a neighbor who outweighs Switzerland in military power a hundred to one, how comes it that the trade and industry, the very life-bread of her children, as Mr. Harrison would have us believe, of the greatest nation in history is in danger of imminent annihilation the moment she loses her military predominance? If the statesmen of Europe would tell us _how_ the military power of a great nation is used to advance the commercial interest of its citizens, would explain to us the _modus operandi_, and not refer us to large and vague phrases about "exercising due weight in the councils of the nations," we might accept their philosophy. But, until they do so, we are surely justified in assuming that their political terminology is simply a survival--an inheritance from a state of things which has, in fact, passed away. It is facts of the nature of those I have instanced which constitute the real protection of the small State, and which are bound as they gain in general recognition to constitute the real protection from outside aggression of all States, great or small.