such force as to encounter an army like
unto that wherewith it was intended that the Prince of Parma should have
landed in England.

"For end of this digression, I hope that this question shall never come
to trial: his majesty's many movable forts will forbid the experience.
And although the English will no less disdain, than any nation under
heaven can do, to be beaten upon their own ground, or elsewhere, by a
foreign enemy, yet to entertain those that shall assail us, with their
own beef in their bellies, and before they eat of our Kentish capons, I
take it to be the wisest way--to do which his majesty, after God, will
employ his good ships on the sea, and not trust in any intrenchment upon
the shore."

The introduction of steam as a propelling power at sea has added tenfold
weight to these arguments of Raleigh. On the other hand, a
well-constructed system of railways, especially of coast-lines, aided by
the operation of the electric telegraph, would give facilities for
concentrating a defensive army to oppose an enemy on landing, and for
moving troops from place to place in observation of the movements of the
hostile fleet, such as would have astonished Sir Walter, even more than
the sight of vessels passing rapidly to and fro without the aid of wind
or tide., The observation of the French marshal whom he quotes is now no
longer correct. Armies can be made to pass from place to place almost
with the speed of wings, and far more rapidly than any post-travelling
that was known in the Elizabethan or any other age. Still, the presence
of a sufficient armed force at the right spot, at the right time, can
never be made a matter of certainty and, even after the changes that
have taken place, no one can doubt but that the policy of Raleigh is
that which England should ever seek to follow in defensive war.

At the time of the armada, that policy certainly saved the country, if
not from conquest, at least from deplorable calamities. If, indeed, the
enemy had landed, we may be sure that he would have been heroically
opposed. But history shows us so many examples of the superiority of
veteran troops over new levies, however numerous and brave, that,
without disparaging our countrymen's soldierly merits, we may well be
thankful that no trial of them was then made on English land. Especially
must we feel this when we contrast the high military genius of the
Prince of Parma, who would have headed the Spaniards, with the
imbecili