TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 803 



tliey would gladly avoid. Objections to this perpetual growth of empire in 

 territory, and to the resulting responsibility which we not altogether willingly 

 accept, are unanswerable theoretically. The too heavy and continually increasing 

 strain upon our military resources every one can appreciate. The limit in power 

 of the strongest navy in the world is at least as obvious as the vital necessity 

 that our Navy be largely and ungrudgingly strengthened. Naturally the cry of 

 cautious patriotic men is the same now that it has always been — ' Consolidate 

 before you step farther.' In India, owing to conscientious and strenuous opposi- 

 tion to every suggestion of expansion and to the almost violent form which that 

 opposition often took, our progress has been on the whole slow and comparatively 

 safe. We have (I, of course, avoid all allusion to very recent policy) as a rule 

 consolidated, strengthened ourselves, and made our ground sure before another 

 advance. But there is a general impression that in other parts of tlie world we 

 have been hastily and unfortunately acquisitive, whether we could help it or not ; 

 that the new provinces, districts, and protectorates are some of them weak to 

 fluidity ; that the great and unprecedented growth of the Empire has led to a 

 stretching and thinning of its holding links which are overstrained by the weight 

 of unwieldy extension and far beyond the help of a protecting hand. I hope to 

 be able to show that in some important respects this suspicion is not altogether 

 true ; that science, human ingenuity, and racial energy have given us some com- 

 pensations, and that it is not paradoxical nor incorrect to say that our recent 

 enormous growth of empire has been everywhere accompanied by a remarkable 

 shrinkage of distances — by quicker and closer intercommunication of all its parts 

 one with another and witli the heart centre. In short, the British Empire, in 

 spite of its seemingly reckless outspread, its sometimes cloudy boundaries, its 

 almost vague and apparently meaningless growth, is at the present day more 

 braced together, more manageable, and more vigorous as a complete organisation 

 than it was sixty years ago. The difference between its actual extent in the last 

 year of the 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 bewildering increase 

 in lines of communication, to our more detailed geographical knowledge, to the 

 formation of new harbours, the extension of railways, 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 laud lines and the sea-cables, the postal improvements, the 

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

 telegraphy. This universal time-diminution in verbal and personal 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 bj^ 

 time-distance, which is the controller of the merchant and the cabinet minister 

 just as much as of the soldier, the world has indeed wonderfullv 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 

 railwayf, 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 vibra- 

 tions of the earth. For us particularly, railway schemes of expansion must be 

 mainly lelied upon to open up and to connect distant parts of the Empire. Our 

 true and only trustworthy road of intercommunication between the heart of the 

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

 as the convenience of busine.ss travellers, all continental lines and all the great 

 projected railways will be helpful, whatever nation controls them ; but our certain 

 security is the sea, the sea which protects us, which has taught us to be an 

 Imperial people, if we ever forget that, there may be a calamitous awakening. 

 VVe must not be persuaded to build — or at any rate to place reliance upon — land 

 roadb or railways through regions inhabited by tribes and peoples over whom we 



3p2 



