In their case there is nothing else to be done; and in their case defence of the character specified would be likely to prove more efficacious than it could be expected to be elsewhere.  War is usually made in pursuit of an object valuable enough to justify the risks inseparable from the attempt to gain it.  Aggression by any of the countries that have been mentioned is too improbable to call for serious apprehension.  Aggression against them is far more likely.  What they have to do is to make the danger of attacking them so great that it will equal or outweigh any advantage that could be gained by conquering them.  Their wealth and resources, compared with those of great aggressive states, are not large enough to make up for much loss in war on the part of the latter engaging in attempts to seize them.  Therefore, what the small maritime countries have to do is to make the form of naval defence to which they are restricted efficacious enough to hurt an aggressor so much that the victory which he may feel certain of gaining will be quite barren.  He will get no glory, even in these days of self-advertisement, from the conquest of such relatively weak antagonists; and the plunder will not suffice to repay him for the damage received in effecting it.

The case of a member of the great body known as the British Empire is altogether different.  Its conquest would probably be enormously valuable to a conqueror; its ruin immensely damaging to the body as a whole.  Either would justify an enemy in running considerable risks, and would afford him practically sufficient compensation for considerable losses incurred.  We may expect that, in war, any chance of accomplishing either purpose will not be neglected.  Provision must, therefore, be made against the eventuality.  Let us for the moment suppose that, like one of the smaller countries whose case has been adduced, we are restricted to localised defence.  An enemy not so restricted would be able to get, without being molested, as near to our territory—­whether in the mother country or elsewhere—­as the outer edge of the comparatively narrow belt of water that our localised defences could have any hope of controlling effectively.  We should have abandoned to him the whole of the ocean except a relatively minute strip of coast-waters.  That would be equivalent to saying good-bye to the maritime commerce on which our wealth wholly, and our existence largely, depends.  No thoughtful British subject would find this tolerable.  Everyone would demand the institution of a different defence system.  A change, therefore, to the more active system would be inevitable.  It would begin with the introduction of a cruising force in addition to the localised force.  The unvarying lesson of naval history would be that the cruising division should gain continuously on the localised.  It is only in times of peace, when men have forgotten, or cannot be made to understand, what war is, that the opposite takes place.