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The history of a countryside might be dramatised and enacted for the pride of its people; the enthusiasm which, in recent years, has been given, here and there, to elaborate and costly pageants-generally spoilt by the weather-could be expended with economy of money, nerves, and temper, and with a greater intimacy and artistic truth, in the local playhouse. Members of a church congregation might perform in its season the legend of the saint to whom their edifice was dedicated, and so would improve the teaching of the pulpit, by illustrating scriptural persons and events, that the mysteries and miracle-plays, modified to suit these altered times, might live again. Scenes from Shakespeare would be performed every week in the schools. The children at home with their habitual tendency to dress-up and make-believe, following the good example, would be encouraged to invent and act their own astounding versions of fairy tales, though possibly with heated, harmless altercations as to who was to be the blessed princess and who the admired ogre. Indeed the future is assured of an infinite development in regard to the arts of the Drama.

As a consequence of this growth and restored interest, the professional stage must regain prosperity, for such reactions are bound to benefit the actors and actresses of the legitimate drama. Visitors to London and the greater cities would go to the theatres then, not only to enjoy the plays, but also to see how things were done that they might emulate those qualities and interpretations on the stage of their village theatre. Also, it would tend to help earnest actors and actresses, for they would be hired to train, rehearse, and produce the local efforts; and so the heart-breaking weariness of their frequently having nothing to do would be reduced, and in many cases altogether removed. Authors would receive an increasing recompense of royalties, as their plays were more frequently performed; but we must take heed lest we drift out of the Land of Reasonable Promise into the Utopia which dies with every coldly practical morning.

EDWARD FALKNER.

Art. 4.-THE STRENGTH OF ENGLAND.

1. History of England. By George Macaulay Trevelyan. Longmans, 1926.

2. The Strength of England. By George F. S. Bowles. Methuen, 1926.

3. The British Navy in Adversity. By Captain W. M. James, C.B., R.N. Longmans, 1926.

4. Law and Custom of the Sea.

Navy Records Society, 1915-16.

Edited by R. G. Marsden.

5. Politics and Economics. By Herbert G. Williams. Murray, 1926.

6. Peace and Goodwill in Industry. By Stanley Baldwin. Allen and Unwin, 1925.

IN a fine passage in Mr G. M. Trevelyan's new and most entrancing history of England we read that:

'The story of the Mingling of the Races in Britain, ending with the advent of the Normans, covers a thousand years of history very dimly descried, succeeding to many thousand more of archæological twilight. The era of Celt, Saxon and Dane is like Macbeth's battle on the blasted heath. Prophecy hovers around. Horns are heard blowing in the mist, and a confused uproar of savage tumult and outrage. We catch glimpses of giant figures-mostly warriors at strife. But there are ploughmen, too, it seems, breaking the primeval clod, and we hear the sound of forests crashing to the axe. Around all is the lap of the waves and the cry of seamen beaching their ships.'

To the influence of ships and of seamen in subsequent ages upon our island and Empire story I propose to devote this article, investigating also the light thrown by recent writings upon the sources of our economic stability, which has so far withstood the buffetings of the Great War and its aftermath of internal dissensions and external menace.

In the above-mentioned book, Mr Trevelyan traces to its origins the 'universality of the Englishman's experience and outlook-quite as marked a characteristic as his insularity.' He attributes them to the Englishman's command of the ocean, which has for more than three centuries carried him as explorer, trader, and

colonist to every shore in the two hemispheres. In early times, 'the relation of Britain to the sea was passive and receptive; in modern times, active and acquisitive.' From a period as remote as the Hundred Years' War he traces the beginnings of a distinct English nationality, composed of many different elements of race, character, and culture which the tides of ages had brought to our coasts. By the time of the Reformation Britain had become a world in itself, and it was at this crisis in England's growth, when she was weakening her ties with Europe, that the union with Scotland came about, and at the same time the ocean offered the islanders a pathway to every corner of the newly discovered globe.

Commander Bowles takes us further in our quest. Without aspiring to the literary skill of one of the leading exponents of the English language, he explains to us, in plain terms, the peculiar character of our strength, both in peace and in war, and he gives the basis of his belief that 'however greatly in future the outer regions of the earth may develop, the peculiar and far-reaching form of strength which distinguishes England must ever remain in that island.' The form of strength to which he refers is England's geographical 'sea-centrality' as a centre for the world's trade. This he proves to us, incontestably, by turning the globe before our eyes to show us England in the exact centre of a land-hemisphere, while New Zealand, at the other pole of an earth-axis, is approximately the centre of the opposite hemisphere, nearly all sea, and containing only the comparatively small proportion of land covered by Australia, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and the tip of South America. Such has been the effect upon our position of the explorations which opened the ocean pathway to the newly discovered globe,' producing upon our race the results from which Mr Trevelyan draws his deductions. Where Commander Bowles goes farther is in specifying the responsibilities to the human race which this sea-centrality places upon our shoulders:

"This same maritime strength of England in war, consisting of a non-destructive and preserving pressure upon sea-traffic under the calm control of Law alone, is the greatest security devisable by man against any repetition of such

prolonged efforts of military destruction as those which have recently come near to destroying Western civilisation altogether, and may easily do so finally, if allowed again to break out without due restraint from the sea.'

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In following up his stipulation under the calm control of Law alone,' he explains that it is not to the Law of any individual nation that he refers, but to the Common Law of Nations' administered by the Prize Courts, especially by those of Great Britain and of the United States of America. These courts, he maintains, have an international status; and much, if not all, of our trouble at sea in the Great War was attributable to the action of our Executive Government in having presumed to interfere with the Prize Courts, when Germany applied at sea the lawless destruction which is characteristic of land warfare. For enabling us to trace the origins of this international status, which is claimed for the British Prize Courts, we owe cordial thanks to Mr R. G. Marsden, the able editor of the documents bearing upon this subject that were published, in the years 1915-16, by the Navy Records Society. The first volume of the 'Law and Custom of the Sea' covers the period 1205-1648, and the second volume takes us up to 1767. Commander Bowles, in a striking chapter headed What is the Law?' in his Strength of England,' deals with the subject from 1753 onwards, subsequently treating his theme of 'the land against the sea' in international relationships in some detail, especially as applied during the Napoleonic wars (the First Test') and in the recent Great War (the Second Test').

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From the works to which I have so far referred, we may, perhaps, be inclined to derive an undesirable measure of self-complacency from our historical immunity from invasion; from our, now unalterable, ‘seacentrality'; from the economic stability which has gone therewith; or perchance, from our world-mission, as preservers of a world-peace in the interests not only of ourselves, but of the whole of less-fortunate humanity. Here we find many warnings in the story of the past. Only from unity, and from sacrifice in order to provide sea forces, have these attributes been hitherto derived. In 'The History of England' we read that a well-organised

State, with a united people on land and a naval force at sea, could make itself safe behind the Channel even against such military odds as Philip of Spain, Louis XIV, or Napoleon could assemble on the opposite shore.' We have witnessed a confirmation of this statement in our time. In 'The Strength of England,' the additional claim is made that the people of England (transformed between 1563 and 1713 from a 'strange and obscure island off the coast of Europe to the greatest commercial and maritime dominion upon earth') are at once the chief servants, and hence also the chief masters, of that movement of commodities that is the life of the world. We read also that, although the permanent centrality of England among the nations of the earth is not to be doubted, neither is it a matter of pride-'it certainly cannot be said to be due to any superior quality or merit in the inhabitants of that island.' The author explains further that:

'As a bare condition of her national existence, England is forced to maintain always upon the seas sufficient power to keep open and safe for trade the sea-routes of the world, she must always also possess in fact, whether she desires it or not, the further power to close those roads and to keep them closed.'

To any one who has studied, in detail, the violent fluctuations in the strength of our sea forces in the 18th century, the thought is likely to occur that, since we muddled through somehow in those days, seacentrality itself suffices for our needs, without the sacrifice entailed by providing for sea-power. Let us examine this. In 1713, at the time of the Peace of Utrecht, our maritime security was ensured by the transference of the Netherlands to Austria, an internal power of Central Europe, from whom we had nothing to fear.* Then:

"The quiet and self-contented England of the 18th century slid unawares into a seething cauldron of trouble, whence a very different world would in due time emerge. Yet even in that confused and desperate crisis, such was the energy latent in the individual Englishman, such were the advantages of the island position to the Mistress of the Seas, such was the power in war time of the new industrial machinery, that

* Trevelyan.

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