render the right to prey upon hostile commerce. It was only from
the relative weakness of Great Britain, "or possibly {157} from a
mistaken humanitarianism" that any concessions from the early rigours
of naval warfare were wrung by neutrals. The alliance between Great
Britain and the United States "looks ultimately and chiefly to the
contingency of war," and such an alliance "would find the two (nations)
united upon the ocean, consequently all-powerful there, and so
possessors of that mastership of the general situation which the sea
always has conferred upon its unquestioned rulers.... But why, then,
if supreme, concede to an enemy immunity for his commerce."[5]

Such an alliance would mean nothing less than an imperialistic
predominance in the world. The trans-oceanic colonies of all nations
would be held subject to Anglo-American consent. The power thus
possessed might be used with wisdom and moderation or unwisely and
immoderately. In either case the United States would enter upon the
patrimony of the British Empire. The interests controlling and
exploiting the vast resources of the Empire would come to be American
as well as British. Wall Street would make money throughout the
Empire, and we might some day find a Harvard graduate installed in the
governor's chair of Jamaica even if he did not actually become Viceroy
of India.

The pressure towards such an imperialistic merger grows with the
increasing sense in Great Britain of her precarious international
position. The British Empire is over-extended; it has too narrow a
base for the length of its frontier. In arguing for an Imperial
Federation, the _Round Table_ of London declared (in 1911) that "the
safety of the Imperial system cannot be maintained much longer by the
arrangements which exist at present.... Great Britain alone cannot
indefinitely guarantee the {158} Empire from disruption by external
attack. The farther one looks ahead the more obvious does this become.
A nation of 45,000,000 souls, occupying a small territory and losing
much of the natural increase in its population by emigration, cannot
hope to compete in the long run even against single powers of the first
magnitude--even Russia, for instance, with its 150,000,000 inhabitants,
with America with its 90,000,000, with Germany with its 65,000,000
increasing by nearly a million a year, to say nothing of China with its
430,000,000 souls. Far less can it hope to maintain the dominant
p