The Mighty Deep 



cables. Smaller and smaller grows our world, 

 as greater and greater become the possibilities 

 of intercourse between places and countries, the 

 inhabitants of which, not very long ago, were 

 cut off from one another by months of arduous 

 travel. Distance is a matter of time, not of 

 miles. England is nearer now to her Indian 

 Dominions than she was two hundred years ago 

 to Italy. 



The enormous importance of the command 

 of the sea to the inhabitants of Great Britain 

 is, perhaps, more fully realised at the present 

 time by Britons generally than ever before. 



Other Nationalities are compact, homogeneous, 

 self-contained, self-supporting. They have some- 

 times their Colonies over the water, more or 

 less mere excrescences, additions hooked on for 

 a purpose, separation from which would entail 

 no vital loss to the ruling country. The 

 word " Mother-country" would be a misnomer in 

 such cases. 



But with Great Britain her over-sea Colonies 

 are an essential part of the ''body-politic" — no 

 more to be lopped off without injury and peril 

 to the whole Empire, than a man's limbs can 

 be lopped off without suffering, and loss of blood, 

 and danger to his life. 



286 



