The four hundred millions are not, like the hundreds of millions of Chinese, all together in one part, all surrounded by a single containing border.
They are everywhere; in every clime; on every ocean; under tropical skies; around temperate seas; amid frozen plains. Each fraction of the Empire is divided from other fractions by the Ocean; and this makes needful, as an absolute essential to the integrity of the Empire, the command of leading Ocean-highways, by which the different portions are united.
From England to India; from England to Canada; from England to Australia; from England to South Africa; from England to Gibraltar and Malta and Egypt; from England to lesser Dependencies innumerable—always the “roadway” is over-sea; always the route is across the ocean-waters. Those ocean highways are thronged by the Empire’s ships; and under those seas thousands of miles of stout cable in all directions serve as do the “speaking tubes” in some large business establishment.
As surely as the existence of Great Britain depended in earlier days upon the strength of her Navy, so surely does the existence of the British Empire depend in these later days upon her command of the sea. Once let that vanish, and the Empire must fall to pieces.
A little Island in northern waters, clothed often in fogs, small in extent, crowded in population, without the means “aboard” of feeding its own people;—yet, from that same little Island are extended wide sheltering Wings around the whole globe, guarding her Dependencies, warning off interference on the part of other Powers. So that, in the infancy of many a young Daughter-land, and even in later more vigorous growth, the Children have been protected; and no man, no potentate, whatever his ambitions might be, has dared to lay a finger on them.
But the benefit is not all or only on one side.
As years go by, children repay their parents’ care. These young sheltered lands across the Ocean are growing strong. And in the day when the Mother-land found herself in difficulties, they joyously sprang one and all to her help, giving freely of their time, their money, their strength, their bravest and best, their very life-blood, in her service.
God-given, surely, is this mighty Empire into the hands of the Anglo-Saxon Race, to be used for God and for the good of Man, to be governed in the Name and in the Spirit of Christ.
It is a marvellous and unique sight. A world-wide Empire of modern days; divided by broad extents of Ocean; held together, not by fear, not by the sword, not by the iron heel of despotism, not even primarily by self-interest, but by Bonds of Love.
A congeries of free Nations, Mother and Children, united into ONE, by the noblest and purest of all ties; having had through over sixty years for its centre, for the controlling idea and motive of Empire, a Woman of tender heart and Royal spirit, a Queenly figure on Her Throne, to whom those hundreds of millions in many Lands were dear, since one and all they were to Her—“My People.” And though She has passed away, that thought has been taken up by Her Royal successor, one of whose first Kingly utterances was in the form of letters addressed—not only to “My People,” but to “My People beyond the Seas.”