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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



of the Armada made the real issue clear, 

 loyally supported the Crown, and after- 

 wards flatly told the Spanish agents that 

 no revolt brought about with Spanish 

 assistance would have their support. 

 Similarly the fatal error of James II 

 was his reliance upon French assistance. 

 Neither he nor his children were ever 

 able to arouse any considerable enthusi- 

 asm for a party whose success meant 

 French influence and perhaps French 

 domination in English politics. 



Foreign domination had been, in fact, 

 for centuries the worst possibility that 

 Englishmen could conceive. Let us not 

 forget that the worst crime set down to 

 the discredit of the most unpopular king 

 in English annals was his surrender of 

 his kingdom to a foreigner, even though 

 that foreigner was the Pope, the Vicar 

 of God. 



rut ENGIvISH ALWAYS UNITED AGAINST 

 THE FOREIGNER 



Do we not, in fact, get a strong light 

 upon English feeling from the usage of 

 words by Henry VIII at the time of the 

 Reformation? He and his statesmen 

 were seeking some phrases sure to ren- 

 der the Pope and Catholics unpopular 

 with the men in the street. The words, 

 which recur again and again throughout 

 sixteenth-century statutes, are the words 

 "foreigner" and "foreign." When Wil- 

 liam HI prepared to seize the throne in 

 1689, he saw clearly that he must win 

 without fighting and conquer James II 

 without an army. A civil war would be 

 disastrous ; the use of Dutch troops, ex- 

 cept for a few men in his own bodyguard, 

 would defeat the expedition before it 

 started. 



It is this sentiment of nationality — 

 strong enough to prevail in the minds of 

 even the most ignorant people over pas- 

 sion, religion, cupidity, ambition — which 

 has throughout English history dissolved 

 the malcontent party at the crucial mo- 

 ment, when their treason appeared to 

 them in its true light, and has thus robbed 

 the invader of the assistance on which 

 so much depended. 



The geographical position of England 

 as an island, the strategical geography of 

 Europe which created antipathies be- 



tween other nations, the domestic strug- 

 gles of other nations toward nationality, 

 have all been, without doubt, the tools 

 which England has used in securing her 

 present position ; but the real motive 

 power has been the spiritual quality of 

 the nation itself, its cohesion and unas- 

 sailable unity, which rest in last analysis 

 upon geographical forces and upon the 

 accident of history. Indeed, had Eng- 

 land not attained this cohesion and unity 

 so early that by the time she entered the 

 European arena they were the premises 

 of English thought and action, even these 

 factors would not have been sufficient to 

 insure her influence or safety. 



England's economic strength 



England's economic strength has been 

 due to those same peculiar and excep- 

 tional factors to which she owes the ad- 

 vanced state of her national gonscious- 

 ness. She has had a certain advantage — 

 an artificial handicap, if you will — in the 

 economic race with other nations. The 

 small area of arable land in the plain 

 sloping from the Welsh Mountains to the 

 Channel and the North Sea was nearly 

 all available for agriculture, though not 

 all of it exceedingly fertile. A mild, 

 equable temperature, without great ex- 

 tremes of heat or cold, an abundant but 

 not excessive rainfall, produced condi- 

 tions peculiarly favorable for the crude 

 agriculture of the Middle Ages. The 

 mild winters made it possible to leave 

 cattle in the open fields the year round 

 and ordinarily kept enough, .grass green 

 to provide them with food 12 months in 

 the year. Poor as was the quality of 

 this grass, scraggy as the cattle were, in- 

 efficient as the agriculture was, the re- 

 turns seem to have been somewhat greater 

 than those in countries like Germany, 

 where the winter was more severe. 



This small, well-knit country possessed 

 also the artificial advantage of isolation 

 from Europe, Its small size and its for- 

 mation resulted in a political unity which 

 has not been disturbed or seriously ques- 

 tioned since the eleventh century. There 

 was no geographical basis for two or 

 more States of nearly equal strength, 

 from whose rivalries serious or long wars 

 misrht result. 



