The oldest, and (by the rough tests of area, population, and natural resources) by far the greatest of these new composite world-states, was the British Empire, which included 12,000,000 square miles, or one-quarter of the land-surface of the globe.  It rested upon the wealth, vigour, and skill of a population of 45,000,000 in the homeland, to which might be added, but only by their own consent, the resources of five young daughter-nations, whose population only amounted to about 15,000,000.  Thus it stood upon a rather narrow foundation.  And while it was the greatest, it was also beyond comparison the most loosely organised of all these empires.  It was rather a partnership of a multitude of states in every grade of civilisation than an organised and consolidated dominion.  Five of its chief members were completely self-governing, and shared in the common burdens only by their own free will.  All the remaining members were organised as distinct units, though subject to the general control of the home government.  The resources of each unit were employed exclusively for the development of its own welfare.  They paid no tribute; they were not required to provide any soldiers beyond the minimum needed for their own defence and the maintenance of internal order.  This empire, in short, was not in any degree organised for military purposes.  It possessed no great land-army, and was, therefore, incapable of threatening the existence of any of its rivals.  It depended for its defence firstly upon its own admirable strategic distribution, since it was open to attack at singularly few points otherwise than from the sea; it depended mainly, for that reason, upon naval power, and secure command of the sea-roads by which its members were linked was absolutely vital to its existence.  Only by sea-power (which is always weak in the offensive) could it threaten its neighbours or rivals; and its sea-power, during four centuries, had always, in war, been employed to resist the threatened domination of any single power, and had never, in time of peace, been employed to restrict the freedom of movement of any of the world’s peoples.  On the contrary, the Freedom of the Seas had been established by its victories, and dated from the date of its ascendancy.  The life-blood of this empire was trade; its supreme interest was manifestly peace.  The conception of the meaning of empire which had been developed by its history was not a conception of dominion for dominion’s sake, or of the exploitation of subjects for the advantage of a master.  On the contrary, it had come to mean (especially during the nineteenth century) a trust; a trust to be administered in the interests of the subjects primarily, and secondarily in the interests of the whole civilised world.  That this is not the assertion of a theory or an ideal, but of a fact and a practice, is sufficiently demonstrated by two unquestionable facts:  the first that the units which formed this empire were not only free