which stands on the summit of that monument faces not westward
but eastward. The Grand Army could have crossed that narrow strip of
water. It could, no doubt, have made a landing on British soil, but
Napoleon, possibly the greatest military genius the world has ever seen,
anticipated Field-Marshal von Moltke, who said that he had found eight
ways of getting into England, but he had not found one of getting out
again, unless it were possible to pump the North Sea dry, and march the
men over. In other words, sir, the British Navy was then, as now,
paramount on seas; the oceans were our territories, and the coasts of
Europe our frontiers.

"Again, sir, we must not forget that those were the days of sails, and
that these are the days of steam. What was then a matter of days is now
only a matter of hours. It is two hundred and forty-two years since the
sound of hostile guns was heard in the city of London. To-morrow morning
their thunder may awaken us.

"It has been said, sir, that Great Britain plays the game of Diplomacy
with her cards face upwards on the table. That, in a sense, is true, and
His Majesty's Government propose to play the same game now. The demands
which have been presented by the Federation of European Powers, at the
head of which stands the German Emperor--demands which, it is hardly
necessary for me to say, were instantly rejected--are these: That
Gibraltar shall be given back to Spain; that Malta shall be dismantled,
and cease to be a British naval base; that the British occupation of
Egypt and the Soudan shall cease, and that the Suez Canal and the
Trans-Continental Railway from Cairo to the Cape shall be handed over to
the control of an International Board, upon which the British Empire
will be graciously allowed one representative.

"It is further demanded that Singapore, the Gate of the East, shall be
placed under the control of the same International Board, and that the
fortifications of Hong Kong shall be demolished. That, sir, would amount
to the surrender of the British Empire, an empire which can only exist
as long as the ocean paths between its various portions are kept
inviolate.

"Those proposals, sir, in plain English are threats, and His Majesty's
Government has returned the only possible answer to them, and that
answer is war--war, let us remember, which may within a few weeks, or
even days, be brought to our own doors. Whatever our enemies may have
said of us it is still true that Bri