naval policy was not a wise one, and our navy strong enough to defend the empire, it is certain that we should have been attacked and plundered long ago. This sounds very plausible; but unfortunately history is replete with instances of what we might call deferred punishment. Prestige lasts a long time; and such a glorious prestige as that of the British navy is certain to exercise a potent influence for many years after the victories and triumphs which gave rise to it, more especially as there has not been of late years any maritime warfare of sufficient importance (between any nations) to dim the lustre of our naval renown. The naval glories of England, and the marvellously brilliant campaigns of the great Napoleon, stood for many a year on pinnacles of equal height: they were contemporary. Ulm and Trafalgar were within a day or two of each other. The military glories of Napoleon, though still unique in the peculiar development of martial genius, with which they paralysed and subdued Europe, have had their lustre somewhat dimmed and been relegated to ancient history (to use a popular phrase) by the still more magnificent campaign of the Franco-German war.
This war wiped out the military prestige of France. The French army had been allowed to fall into decay. Corruption, and mismanagement were rampant: it had continued to live upon a prestige gained under a more perfect system of organisation; but when the day of trial came, its prestige could not save it, and it collapsed before an army with a more perfect organisation, which produced bigger battalions, better equipped and better supplied, and directed by a staff which, without trusting to prestige, or leaving anything to luck which human foresight could make certain, had studied deeply, and were prepared to carry out practically, a sound and scientific strategy.
It seems to us that the British navy of to-day, though perhaps not corrupted by actual fraud or malversation, has so fallen under the blighting influence of party politics, and been made the plaything of ambitious politicians seeking renown as economists, that its raison d'être has been completely lost sight of, and responsible Ministers are forced to acknowledge that it is not strong enough to defend the empire. We have seen above that prestige the most brilliant will not supply the place of properly organised physical force. Vague phrases and grandiloquent after-dinner speeches must give way to the more prosaic counting of heads and counting of ships; and when this is done, we must sit down quietly and calculate what it is we shall require our navy to do for us in case of war, let us say, with France. This has been done by some of our ablest and most thoughtful seamen – such men as Admirals of the Fleet Sir Thomas Symonds, Sir Geoffrey Hornby, Admirals Sir Spencer Robinson and Colomb, and by others; and it is a fact worth noticing that all these men, who are untrammelled by office and uninfluenced by party considerations, are unanimous in their views as to the dangerous weakness of our navy, and urgent in their appeals to the nation to strengthen it without delay.
A large and influential meeting of merchants, bankers, underwriters, and representative city men of all shades of political opinion, was held at the Cannon Street Hotel on June 5, to consider the
