schievous and
dangerous distribution of naval force and to the squandering of
immense sums of money on local defence vessels; that is, vessels
only capable of operating in the very waters from which every
effort should be made to exclude the enemy. Failure to exclude
him from them can only be regarded as, at the very least, yielding
to him an important point in the great game of war. If we succeed
in keeping him away, the local defence craft of every class are
useless, and the money spent on them has been worse than wasted,
because, if it had not been so spent, it might have been devoted
to strengthening the kind of force which must be used to keep
the enemy where he ought to be kept, viz. at a distance from
our own waters.

The demand that ships be so stationed that they will generally,
and except when actually cruising, be within sight of the
inhabitants, is common enough in the mother country, and perhaps
even more common in the over-sea parts of the British Empire.
Nothing justifies it but the honest ignorance of those who make
it; nothing explains compliance with it but the deplorable weakness
of authorities who yield to it. It was not by hanging about the
coast of England, when there was no enemy near it, with his fleet,
that Hawke or Nelson saved the country from invasion, nor was it
by remaining where they could be seen by the fellow-countrymen
of their crews that the French and English fleets shut up their
enemy in the Baltic and Black Sea, and thus gained and kept
undisputed command of the sea which enabled them, without
interruption, to invade their enemy's territory.

The condition insisted upon by the Australasian Governments in
the agreement formerly made with the Home Government, that a
certain number of ships, in return for an annual contribution
of money, should always remain in Australasian waters, was in
reality greatly against the interests of that part of the empire.
The Australasian taxpayer was, in fact, made to insist upon being
injured in return for his money. The proceeding would have been
exactly paralleled by a householder who might insist that a
fire-engine, maintained out of rates to which he contributes,
should always be kept within a few feet of his front door, and
not be allowed to proceed to the end of the street to extinguish
a fire threatening to extend eventually to the householder's own
dwelling. When still further localised naval defence--localised
defence, that is, of what ma