THE SCIENCE OF DISTANCES. 531 



century and its size at the date of the Queen's accession can be estimated 

 by a glance at a remarkable series of maps published in the 'Statesman's 

 Year-book for 1897/ while since 1897, and at this instant as we all 

 know well, its mighty bulk is being still further increased. 



The world as a whole has strangely contracted owing to a bewilder- 

 ing increase in lines of communication, to our more detailed geographi- 

 cal knowledge, to the formation of new harbors, the extension of rail- 

 ways, the increased speed and the increased number of steamships, and 

 the greatly augmented carrying power of great sailing vessels built of 

 steel. Then, hardly second in importance to these influences are the 

 great land lines and the sea-cables, the postal improvements, the tele- 

 phones, and perhaps we may soon add the proved commercial utility of 

 wireless telegraphy. This universal time diminution in verbal and per- 

 sonal contact has brought the colonies, our dependencies, protectorates, 

 and our dependencies of dependencies, closer to each other and all of 

 them nearer still to us. Measured by time-distance, which is the con- 

 troller of the merchant and the cabinet minister just as much as of the 

 soldier, the world has indeed wonderfully contracted, and with this 

 lessening the dominions of the Queen have been rapidly consolidating. 

 Nor is this powerful influence by any means exhausted. In the near 

 future we may anticipate equally remarkable improvements of a like 

 kind, especially in railways, telegraph lines and deep-sea cables, and in 

 other scientific discoveries for transmitting man's messages through 

 water, in the air, or perhaps by the vibrations of the earth. For us par- 

 ticularly, railway schemes of expansion must be mainly relied upon to 

 open up and connect distant parts of the Empire. Our true and only 

 trustworthy road of intercommunication between the heart of the Em- 

 pire and its limits must always be the sea. For general trade purposes, 

 such as the convenience of business travelers, all continental lines and 

 all the great projected railways will be helpful, whatever nation con- 

 trols them; but our certain security is the sea, the sea which protects 

 us, which has taught us to be an Imperial people. But if we ever for- 

 get that, there may be a calamitous awakening. We must not be per- 

 suaded to build — or at any rate to place reliance upon — land roads or 

 railways through regions inhabited by tribes and peoples over whom we 

 have not complete military as well as political control. Persian, Ara- 

 bian, North African railway projects are happily rarely heard of now. 

 As national enterprises they never were and never could be practicable, 

 or otherwise than dangerous mistakes. We are a world-power solely be- 

 cause of our warships and because of our command of the sea. In the 

 future also we shall remain a world-power only so long as we hold com- 

 mand of the sea in the fullest sense of the term, not merely by the force 

 and efficiency of the fighting Navy, but by the excellence and the per- 

 fecting of our mercantile marine, by increasing its magnitude, carrying 



