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THE STRATEGICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 
has not Lord Rosebery said recently that the British Empire is the 
very greatest influence for good on earth ? His words were welcome as 
water in the arid desert of the meaningless empty tirades, whereby the 
ignorant are gulled into forgetting their truest and highest interests. 
We cannot, and dare not be indifferent to the stupendous interests 
involved in the military topography of our neighbours of Western 
Europe. Everything that affects them must more or less affect us; 
but your proud motto Ubique reminds me of what a people we are, and 
of how distinguished an honour I receive in being allowed to address 
the Royal Regiment of Artillery. British Artillery—in this hall, your 
motto Ubique indicates truly that our empire is far grander than any 
that ever arose or fell in Europe, Western or Eastern, Roman or Gothic, 
Moslem or Christian, Gallic or Teuton, and that the responsibilities of its 
statesmen and soldiers are beyond compare. Radiating from these 
isles a long series of expeditions have given our race supremacy in 
every continent. Your guns command a route for our ships at the 
rock of Gibraltar, at Malta, in Cyprus, from which Richard I. led his 
Crusaders to the reconquest of Palestine. The English are now at the 
spot which “great Ammon’s son” selected not only as the Capital of Egypt, 
but as a strategic point for the conquest of Asia, and thence your Empire 
reaches through the realms of the Moguls to utmost Cathay, while still 
further East it holds in fief the mightiest Isles of the Pacific, and its 
sway extends over the North of America, back again to the 
Atlantic. To keep this Empire intact is the duty of our generation even 
as its acquisition was the duty of our fathers. How to do this most 
efficiently history will teach us. The interest you display in studies, 
which guide and warn mankind, makes me confident that, if our Empire 
also points the moral and adorns the tale of the vanity of human wishes, 
the blame will not rest on your shoulders. You will have done your 
duty ; you will have striven to preserve it pure and mighty as our ocean 
itself, “ icing the pole, and in the torrid clime, dark heaving, boundless, 
endless, and sublime.” 
CHAIRMAN : We give you our best thanks for having put so much 
interest into this subject which you have dealt with. I hope we may 
be fired ourselves with the same interest as you have brought into the 
subject. 
Major May : Some of us would like to hear from you whether 
there is any geographical explanation of how it is that Belgium has 
become the battlefield of Europe on so many occasions. 
Dr. Maguire : It is very clear that Belgium is a very convenient 
road into France under some conditions, and of course the English 
would naturally, especially if in alliance with the Dutch, with Belgium 
itself, or with the North Germans, select it for a theatre of operations 
as in 1658, 1793, and 1815. If the Rhine from Strasburg to Coblentz 
and the Vosges and Moselle were very strongly occupied and fortified 
by the French, the Germans might try to turn these position by way 
of Belgium, or vice versa. Moreover the open character of Belgium 
makes it a convenient country for grand manoeuvres. But clearly also 
Belgium is not the shortest cut to either Paris or Berlin, or Vienna, and 
armies adopting it could move on two sides of a triangle. My answer 
