E.—GROGRAPHY. 127 
The Cape route to India and Australasia is improved by British 
ports of call in Sierra Leone, St. Helena, and Mauritius, and is more 
effectively dominated from British South Africa than at first appears, 
for although there is open sea to the south there are no useful harbours 
in the Antarctic continent, and on the African coasts the harbours are 
under British control for a thousand miles from Cape Town. 
Oi the six great foreign Powers the French alone are posted on the 
flank of both routes between Great Britain and the Indian Ocean, and 
no Great Power has its home territory on that ocean, or railway con- 
nection thereto from its home territory. 
Thus the principal lands of the British Empire—Canada, the British 
Isles, South Africa, India, and Australasia—have good communications 
with one another across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans both in peace 
and war. 
The conditions of strategic communication across the North Pacific, 
on the contrary, are adverse to us, owing mainly to the circumstance 
that we opened up British Columbia across the prairies and by the coast- 
ing voyage. Had our colonising route been across the Pacific, the 
Hawaiian Islands, which were first brought into touch with the Western 
world by the ships of the Royal Navy, would have been a British settle- 
ment and one of our first-class naval stations. As things happened, 
however, these islands were first needed by the Americans, and now 
form the essential western outpost of the United States Navy. Between 
them and British Columbia the ocean is empty of islands, and Fanning 
Island, south-west of Hawaii, with the adjacent small coral islands in 
our possession, are no adequate substitute, even apart from overshadow- 
ing by a first-class naval station in the neighbourhood. Thus there is 
no good strategic communication between Australasia and Canada across 
the North Pacific. In this connection it must be remembered that 
cousinship does not relieve the American Government from the obliga- 
tions which international law imposes upon neutrals. It was not until 
three years after the outbreak of the Great War that America could 
offer us any facilities in the harbour of Honolulu which were not equally 
open to Germans. It must also be noticed that.we have no control of 
the Panama route between New Zealand and Great Britian. 
Turning to the question of communication between British Columbia 
and India, it is important to realise that the Pacific coasts of North 
America and Asia are in a direct line with one another, forming part 
of a Great Circle, so that there is no short cut across the ocean, as the 
map misleadingly suggests. Thus the course hetween Vancouver and 
Hong Kong is not only very long, but also closely flanked by the home 
ports of Japan and many outlying Japanese islands, so that its security 
in time of war depends upon the attitude of the Japanese. 
When, therefore, we differentiate the routes on which we have well- 
placed naval stations and recruiting bases from those dominated by the 
ports of some other Great Power, we see that the lands of the Empire are 
united by the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and strategically separated 
by the North Pacific. Thus the form in which the Mercator map is 
usually drawn by British cartographers with Canada in the upper left 
and Australasia in the lower right corner is a good representation of our 
1923 h 
