Does he not know that, in the days prior to England's creation of her mighty fleet, she has been easily conquered by invaders? Is he aware of the great British historical fact called the Norman Conquest? Has he never heard that before starting on his triumphant march across Europe, culminating at Austerlitz, the great Napoleon had planned an invasion of England, with every prospects of success, if he had not been deterred from carrying it out by the continental coalition which, calling into play the resources of his mighty genius, he so victoriously crushed and dispersed? Has he never read anything about panic stricken England until she was relieved from the dangers of the projected invasion?
Does he not realize that, unless they were madmen, no British ministers will ever consent to renounce their "UNDOUBTED RIGHT" to be ever ready for any emergency, to save their country from enslavement by would-be dashing invaders? It is the height of political nonsense to suppose that responsible public men ever could be so blind, or so recreant to their most sacred duty, as to follow the wild course recommended by extravagantly prejudiced "Nationalists."
The man who would throw away his weapons of defense would have nothing else to do but to kneel down and implore the tender mercy of his criminal aggressor. Truly loyal subjects of the Empire cannot clamour to bring England down to such an humiliating position. They know too well that if ever matters came to so disastrous a pass, Great Britain could easily be starved into irremediable submission with the consequent and immediate destruction of the whole fabric of the Empire. A Nationalist, yawning for such an end, may suggest the best way to reach it. But no loyal man, sincerely wishing the maintenance of the great British Commonwealth, will ever do so.
No wonder that he who came out openly in favour of Imperial Federation for the express purpose of ruining the Empire, endeavours to achieve his most cherished object in first destroying British naval supremacy on the seas. Imperial Federation would then no longer be necessary for the consummation of his longing wishes.
Freedom of the seas and British naval supremacy are not antagonistic by any means, as I have previously well explained. It is an unanswerable proposition—a truism—to say that supremacy on the ocean will always exist, held by one nation or another. The Power commanding the superior naval fleet will for ever be supreme on the seas. It is mere common sense to say so. Mr. Bourassa would vainly work his wind-mill for centuries without changing this eternal rule of sound sense.
If, by whichever cause, England was to lose her sea supremacy, it would at once, as a matter of course, pass on to the next superior naval Power.
In a subsequent chapter on the after-the-war military problem, I shall explain the way or ways, by which, in my opinion, the question of the freedom of the seas, so much misunderstood, could be settled to the satisfaction of all concerned.
With regard to the supposed conflict of "anglo-saxonism" and "pan-germanism" I will merely say that it is only another sample of Mr. Bourassa's wily dreams.
As I have already said, this last pamphlet of the Nationalist leader is, for a large part of it, but the repetition of his diatribes so often hurled at England. I will close this chapter by quoting from page 57, the following paragraph which summarizes, in a striking way, the charges Mr. Bourassa is so fond to hurl at the mother-country. It reads thus:—
"What has allowed England to bring Portugal into vassalage? to dominate Spain and keep Gibraltar, Spanish land? to deprive Greece of the Ionians and Cyprus Islands? to steal Malta? to foment Revolution in the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States? to run, during thirty years, the foreign policy of Italy and to throw her in Austria's execrated arms? to take possession of Suez and to make her own thing of it? to chase France from the Upper Nile, and subsequently from the whole of Egypt, to intervene in the Berlin treaty to deprive Russia of the profits of her victory, to galvanize dying Turkey, to delay for thirty years the revival of the Balkan States and to make of Germany the main spring of continental Europe? In a word, what has permitted England to rule the roost in Europe and to accumulate the frightful storm let loose in 1914? Who? What? if it is not the "naval domination" of England ever since the destruction of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar."