s contraband food destined for the
civil population and this course ought to be anticipated, but in the
military weakness of Great Britain an enemy whose navy had gained the
upper hand would almost certainly prefer to undertake the speedier
process of bringing the war to an end by landing an army in Great
Britain. A landing on a coast so extensive as that of this island can
with difficulty be prevented by forces on land, because troops cannot be
moved as quickly as ships.

The war in the Far East has shown how strong such an army might be, and
how great a military effort would be needed to crush it. The proper way
to render an island secure, is by a navy strong enough to obtain in war
the control of the surrounding sea, and a navy unable to perform that
function cannot be regarded as a guarantee of security.

The immediate effects of naval victory can hardly ever again be so
far-reaching as they were a century ago in the epoch of masts and sails.
At that time there were no foreign navies, except in European waters,
and in the Atlantic waters of the United States. When, therefore, the
British navy had crushed its European adversaries, its ships could act
without serious opposition upon any sea and any coast in the world.
To-day, the radius of action of a victorious fleet is restricted by the
necessity of a supply of coal, and therefore by the secure possession
of coaling-stations at suitable intervals along any route by which the
fleet proposes to move, or by the goodwill of neutrals in permitting it
to coal at their depots. To-day, moreover, there are navies established
even in distant seas. In the Pacific, for example, are the fleets of
Japan and of the United States, and these, in their home waters, will
probably be too strong to be opposed by European navies acting at a vast
distance from their bases.

It seems likely, therefore, that neither Great Britain nor any other
State will in future enjoy that monopoly of sea power which was granted
to Great Britain by the circumstances of her victories in the last great
war. What I have called the great prize has in fact ceased to exist, and
even if an adversary were to challenge the British navy, the reward of
his success would not be a naval supremacy of anything like the kind or
extent which peculiar conditions made it possible for Great Britain to
enjoy during the nineteenth century. It would be a supremacy limited and
reduced by the existence of the new navies that ha