um 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 from all tribute in money or men, but were
not even required to make any contribution towards the upkeep of the
fleet, upon which the safety of all depended; the second that every
port and every market in this vast empire, so far as they were under
the control of the central government, were thrown open as freely to
the citizens of all other states as to its own. Finally, in this empire
there had never been any attempt to impose a uniformity of method or
even of laws upon the infinitely various societies which it included:
it not merely permitted, it cultivated and admired, varieties of type,
and to the maximum practicable degree believed in self-government.
Because these