BRITISH COLONIAL AND NAVAL POWER
The sagacity of England is in nothing more clearly shown than in the foresight with which she has provided against the emergency of war. Let it come when it may, it will not find her unprepared. So thickly are her colonies and naval stations scattered over the face of the Earth, that her war-ships can speedily reach every commercial centre on the globe.
There is that great centre of commerce, the Mediterranean Sea. It was a great centre long ago, when the Phœnician traversed it, and, passing through the Pillars of Hercules, sped on his way to the distant, and then savage, Britain. It was a great centre when Rome and Carthage wrestled in a death-grapple for its possession. But at the present day England is as much at home on the Mediterranean as if it were one of her own Canadian lakes.
Nor is it simply the number of the British colonies, or the evenness with which they are distributed, that challenges our admiration. The positions which these colonies occupy, and their natural military strength, are quite as important facts. There is not a sea or a gulf in the world, which has any real commercial importance, but England has a stronghold on its shores. And wherever the continents tending southward come to points, around which the commerce of nations must sweep, there is a British settlement; and the cross of St. George salutes you as you are wafted by. There is hardly a little desolate, rocky island or peninsula, formed apparently by Nature for a fortress, and nothing else, but the British flag floats securely over it.
These are literal facts. Take, for example, the great Overland Route from Europe to Asia. Despite its name, its real highway is on the waters of the Mediterranean and Red Seas. It has three gates—three only. England holds the key to every one of these gates. Count them—Gibraltar, Malta, Aden. But she commands the entrance to the Red Sea, not by one, but by several strongholds. Midway in the narrow strait is the black, bare rock of Perim, sterile, precipitous, a perfect counterpart of Gibraltar; and on either side, between it and the mainland, are the ship-channels which connect the Red Sea with the great Indian Ocean. This rock England holds.
A little farther out is the peninsula of Aden, another Gibraltar, as rocky, as sterile, and as precipitous, connected with the mainland by a narrow strait, and having a harbour safe in all winds, and a central coal depôt. This England bought in 1839. And to complete her security, she has purchased from some petty sultan the neighbouring islands of Socotra and Kouri, giving, as it were, a retaining fee, so that, though she does not need them herself, no rival power may ever possess them.
As we sail a little farther on, we come to the China Sea. What a beaten track of commerce is this! What wealth of comfort and luxury is wafted over it by every breeze!—the teas of China; the silks of farther India; the spices of the East. The ships of every clime and nation swarm on its waters—the stately barques of England, France, and Holland; the swift ships of America; and mingled with them, in picturesque confusion, the clumsy junk of the Chinaman, and the slender, darting canoe of the Malaysian islanders.
At the lower end of the China Sea, where it narrows into Malacca Strait, England holds the little island of Singapore—a spot of no use to her whatever, except as a commercial depôt, but of inestimable value for that; a spot which, under her fostering care, is growing up to take its place among the great emporiums of the world. Half-way up the sea she holds the island of Labuan, whose chief worth is this, that beneath its surface and that of the neighbouring mainland there lie inexhaustible treasures of coal, which are likely to yield wealth and power to the hand that controls them. At the upper end of the sea she holds Hong-Kong, a hot, unhealthy island, but an invaluable base from which to threaten and control the neighbouring waters.
Even in the broad, and as yet comparatively untracked Pacific, she is making silent advances towards dominion. The vast continent of Australia, which she has secured, forms its south-western boundary. And pushed out six hundred miles eastward from this lies New Zealand, like a strong outpost, its shores so scooped and torn by the waves that it must be a very paradise of commodious bays and safe havens for the mariner. The soil, too, is of extraordinary fertility; and the climate, though humid, deals kindly with the Englishman's constitution. Nor is this all; for, advanced from it, north and south, like picket stations, are Norfolk Island, and the Auckland group, both of which have good harbours. And it requires no prophet's eye to see that, when England needs posts farther eastward, she will find them among the green coral islets that stud the Pacific.
Turn now your steps homeward, and pause a moment at the Bermudas, those beautiful isles, with their fresh verdure—green gems in the ocean, with air soft and balmy as Eden's was! They have their home uses too. They furnish arrow-root for the sick, and ample supplies of vegetables earlier than sterner climates will yield them. Is this all that can be said? Reflect a little more deeply. These islands possess a great military and naval depôt; and a splendid harbour, landlocked, strongly fortified, and difficult of access to strangers;—and all within a few days' sail of the chief ports of the Atlantic shores of the New World. England therefore retains them as a station on the road to her West Indian possessions; and should America go to war with her, she would use it as a base for offensive operations, where she might gather and whence she might hurl upon any unprotected port all her gigantic naval and military power.
"Atlantic Monthly."