ntinent, to rule with more than regal sway the rich islands
and peninsulas of Asia, and to dictate peace to fallen England from the
guns of her armadas. After five wars waged with no craven spirit in less
than three-quarters of a century, after she had exhausted every resource
and more than once banded against her island foe every naval power in
Europe, she was forced to succumb to British perseverance and to the
gallantry of British sailors. The peace, which came not a moment too
soon, found her with a navy literally annihilated, and with little
remaining of her colonial empire but the memory. When we compare this
hopeless failure with the mercantile activity and naval force of Modern
France,--when we call up, in imagination, her new colonies, the germs
almost of empires,--we cannot admire too much the courage and energy
which have called into existence such magnificent resources. To what are
we to attribute this stupendous change? What have been the methods of
this growth? By what steps has this grand progress from weakness to
strength been achieved?

* * * * *

In such a work of restoration, France had everything to create,--ships,
armaments, machinery, and sailors even, to replace those who had fallen
in the front of battle. To produce capacity of production was her first
work,--to establish new ports or replenish old ones, to build docks, to
rear workshops, to gather materials. This is what she has been doing.
Silently and steadily she has been laying the foundations of maritime
greatness. Her ports, in everything which contributes to naval
efficiency,--in size, in mechanical appliances, in concentration upon
one spot of all the trades and all the resources necessary for the
construction and repair of war-ships,--excel all other naval depots in
the world.

This is no exaggeration. There is the port of Cherbourg. Originally it
was little more than an open bay, hollowed by the waters of the English
Channel in the French coast, with a rocky shore exposed to every
northern blast. But it was situated just where France needed a harbor,
midway on her northern coast, facing England. Across this open bay, as a
chord subtends its arc, a gigantic sea-wall has been stretched. Built in
deep water more than a mile from the head of the bay, it extends almost
from shore to shore. It is nearly three miles long. It is scarcely less
than nine hundred feet wide at its base. Rising from the bed of the s