THE RENEWED STRUGGLE FOR THE SCHOOLS. By the Ven. Archdeacon AND THE CATHOLICS OF THE EMPIRE. By PAG 521 THE CONDITION OF THE NAVAL RESERVE. By W. Laird Clowes LITERATURE AND THE THEATRE. By Frederick Wedmore THE CASE AGAINST HOSPITAL NURSES. By Miss M. F. Johnston THE LATEST SHIPWRECK OF METAPHYSICS. By W. H. Mallock FREEMASONRY IN FRANCE. By G. A. Raper WHERE ARE THE VILLAGE GENTRY? A REJOINDER. By Lieut.-Colonel Pedder. CROSSING THE RIVER. By Mrs. Popham THE LITERATURE OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH. By Percy F. (1) CAPITAL AND POPULATION. By J. W. Cross (2) FEMALE EMIGRATION. By the Hon. Mrs. Evelyn Cecil THE DREAM OF A BRITISH ZOLLVEREIN. By Sir Robert Giffen SOUTH AFRICA AND INDIA. By Sir Lepel Griffin THE GENIUS OF SPAIN. By Havelock Ellis. (1) By the Hon. Sydney Holland NEWTON HALL. By Frederic Harrison PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF CECIL RHODES: (1) SOME CONVERSATIONS IN LONDON. By Sidney Low A FEW WORDS ON THE NEW EDUCATION BILL. By the Right Hon. James THE SHIPPING COMBINE' AND THE BRITISH FLAG. By Edmund Robertson 8 THE NAVIGATION LAWS. By Hugh R. E. Childers PREFERENTIAL TARIFFS WITHIN THE EMPIRE-A REPLY TO SIR ROBERT THE FIGHT AT ROIVAL (50). By Captain L. Oppenheim. LONDON UNIVERSITY: A POLICY AND A FORECAST. By Sidney Webb ANOTHER ASPECT OF THACKERAY. By Mrs. Leche. SOME POSSIBLE AMENDMENTS TO THE EDUCATION BILL. By Sir Joshua A QUARTER of a century ago I raised my voice against the folly of allowing our attention to be distracted from our true needs and national interests on the coasts of India and in the seas of the East by those costly Afghan campaigns which were intended to counteract the visionary schemes of Russia in Central Asia. Those schemes still loom big in the public eye and fill too large a place in our minds to the exclusion of important questions that call urgently for solution. I am tempted once more, as one whose race must be nearly run, to make a fresh effort to direct the attention of my countrymen to the matters on which their power, security, and prosperity really depend, and to entreat them not to permit their thoughts to be drawn from questions of vital importance to shadowy undertakings VOL. LI-No. 299 B on the part of supposed enemies that may never reach the stage of actuality, and that, even if they should, would be more effectually repelled by doing the work that lies ready to our hand than by adopting showy and costly lines of policy. Let us leave Russia and her projects in the interior of Asia alone in the absolute conviction that the sea furnishes the true and only base of our power, and that so long as we are secure thereon and hold Kurrachi, Bombay, and Calcutta Russia could never maintain herself in India. We have only to make this naval power and readiness for all contingencies evident, and we shall have supplied Russia with the strongest reason to keep in her own sphere, and the strongest deterrent to keep out of ours. The time seems to have arrived when the nation should take careful stock of its naval position in the East-I mean in the seas of India and China and in the South Pacific. There are serious defects in that position, disquieting to the observer in times of peace, and on which may turn in time of war the balance of failure and success. Our interests have grown enormously in those seas, our means of defending them have not progressed in the same ratio, and foreign Powers have developed their commerce and acquired naval bases where not so very long ago their flags were unknown. The possession of India by the British race, which some critics have gone so far in their unchecked zeal for national detraction as to call a burden, has now become a vital question to Australia, and will no doubt soon become one also to British South Africa. But the means of retaining India in our possession have in some essential points made no progress, while both the magnitude of the interests involved and the covetousness of those who would naturally like to wrest it from our hands have increased. 'From and by the ocean England won the sovereignty of India, and by the same agency she must maintain it,' I wrote over eighteen years ago in a memorandum which was adopted by Lord Hartington's Defence Committee as the basis of its recommendations. Twenty-three years back I addressed the Viceroy of India in a Minute on Madras Harbour as follows: If we are ever to yield the dominion of India to any European foe, it is by sea that the foe will come, and it is to the protection of our Indian coasts that we shall have to devote our most earnest attention. Absolute security for our coast commerce is essential to our prestige and security in this country, and to put off to the day when war with an European nation is imminent the means necessary to obtain this security is a course too obviously fraught with danger to need further comment.' Fraught with danger as it is, it is precisely what has been done, or rather left undone. 'As matters at present stand,' I wrote in a second Minute on Indian Harbours in 1879, we can really consider ourselves as possessing only comparatively few advantages over a maritime foe in the Indian seas. Not a single port do we own in India the defence of which will stand any criticism. We know that Russia is ever active in the matters of both coast defences and of increase to her navy in the North Pacific. The sympathy of Germany with Russia-active or passive-in many of the most important political events of the last few years is to my mind unquestionable. Year by year we see an increase of Germans flocking eastwards, and an increasing interest taken by Germany, hitherto apathetic on the subject, as regards the Suez Canal. The press of Europe utters no uncertain sound as to the strong probability of a fusion in the near future of the kingdom of Holland with the German Empire-a fusion which must result in the transfer to the German Empire of the whole of the important possessions constituting Netherlands India.' Some of these previsions have been realised, none have lost their force. Netherlands India, with its fine harbours in Sumatra and elsewhere, has not yet acquired any offensive power. But Russia has improved her base at Vladivostock and created a new one at Port Arthur. France has secured a new place d'armes in the Tongking delta. Germany has done likewise at Kiaochow. Japan has risen on the eastern horizon as a naval Power with dockyards, fortified arsenals, and a fleet that has actually achieved considerable success under the conditions of modern warfare. All the factors of the problem have been changed, and some new ones have been introduced, whereas our position has made proportionally far less improvement. The significance of this lack of prescience and neglect of organisation would be brought home to us in any great naval struggle with two or three allied Powers, for which we should always be prepared. More especially would this be the case in the event of the closure of the Suez Canal, which would be the first objective of our foes. I doubt very much if the British public has the least conception of the defects of India regarded as a naval base. Is it aware, for instance, that its seaboard of 2,000 miles from Bombay to Calcutta is unprovided with a single port where goods may be delivered direct from a ship's side on to a wharf? Does it know that when heavy guns were sent in a moment of panic to Madras they could not be landed, and had then to be taken back to Bombay, so that they might be sent by train? Are these things quite consistent with our character as the first seafaring and mercantile nation in the world? It may be said, perhaps, that the absence of harbours on the Indian coasts is the defect of nature for which no one can be blamed. But my proposals for constructing a harbour of refuge at Madras in 1879 are on record, and the whole scheme could have been executed for a comparatively modest sum. Two and a half millions would have sufficed for this work, and when I mention that half a million was lost during the famine of 1876-7 by theft, damage, and waste, owing to there being no harbour at Madras, this sum will not seem ex cessive. Harbours of refuge are absolutely essential to the safety of the rapidly increasing commerce of India. I specified six places within that coast-line of 2,000 miles where they should be created, and up to this time not one of them exists. It is still perfectly true that for protection against a chance enemy's cruiser there is no port whatever on the Malabar coast, and the whole of that of Coromandel is as badly provided. Bombay is now in a position of adequate defence, but sixteen years ago its Governor wrote begging me not to delay in sending out the guns, because at that moment a single enemy's cruiser could have entered the port without resistance. The temporary works which I caused to be erected during the Russian scare in 1878 at Bombay, and the three other principal ports of India and Burma, did not receive their armament till 1886. If this neglect to furnish coaling stations and harbours of refuge at places where their provision would have entailed expenditure was reprehensible, how much greater was the blame where nature had herself been bountiful and supplied exactly what we wanted; and yet our authorities not merely declined to utilise but even spurned the gift! Such an instance was that of Trincomalee, which the Royal Commission, presided over by Lord Carnarvon, 'proposed to abandon altogether as a naval and military station and to dismantle and raze the existing fortifications.' Yet Trincomalee is not only a grand natural, safe, and commodious harbour, but it is the only rendezvous and base for our fleets or ships in those seas under the vicissitudes of victory or defeat. So long as the Dutch held Trincomalee they were supreme in the Eastern seas; when subsequently it fell into our hands, and France had no secure base nearer than the Mauritius, our supremacy followed thereupon. Had Lally's advice been adopted and Trincomalee permanently occupied by France, the history of British India, and possibly of France herself, would have been different. My old friend and colleague, Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, member of the Commission, protested against this abandonment in a minority report, and I had the satisfaction of seeing my arguments prevail over those of the Royal Commission. Trincomalee was not abandoned, and the sum of 45,000l. was assigned to the construction of one or two batteries and the due provision of heavy guns. I may introduce here what I wrote in 1883 about providing adequate defence for Trincomalee. 'Having already stated the. extreme importance that I attach to the retention of Trincomalee as a station for refitting and coaling H.M.'s ships, and as a base and rendezvous for our fleet, it appears desirable that I should very briefly indicate the nature of the defences which in my opinion are necessary to deny the harbour to an enemy's warships and to secure the naval establishment and anchorage from anything but distant bombardment. The entrance to this magnificent harbour is so |