of
the national purpose and a phase of the national mind and is driven
relentlessly to the rivets and the hammering, the "Dreadnoughts"
in being and that mightier Dreadnought yet to be, the Anglo-Saxon
Alliance which Germany must fight if she is to get out.

Doubtless she has already a naval policy and the plans for a naval
war, for the fight will be settled on the sea, but the fate will be
determined on an island.

The Empire that has grown from an island and spread with the winds and
the waves to the uttermost shores will fight and be fought for on the
water and will be ended where it began, on an island.

That island, I believe, will be Ireland and not Great Britain.

Chapter III

THE BALANCE OF POWER

A conflict between England and Germany exists already, a conflict of
aims.

England rich, prosperous, with all that she can possibly assimilate
already in her hands, desires peace on present conditions of world
power. These conditions are not merely that her actual possessions
should remain intact, but that no other Great Power shall, by
acquiring colonies and spreading its people and institutions into
neighbouring regions, thereby possibly affect the fuller development
of those pre-existing British States. For, with England equality
is an offence and the Power that arrives at a degree of success
approximating to her own and one capable of being expanded into
conditions of fair rivalry, has already committed the unpardonable
sin. As Curran put it in his defence of Hamilton Rowan in 1797,
"England is marked by a natural avarice of freedom which she is
studious to engross and accumulate, but most unwilling to impart;
whether from any necessity of her policy or from her weakness, or from
her pride, I will not presume to say."

Thus while England might even be the attacking party, and in all
probability will be the attacking party, she will embark on a war
with Germany at an initial disadvantage. She will be on her defence.
Although, probably, the military aggressor from reasons of strategy,
she will be acting in obedience to an economic policy of defence and
not of attack. Her chief concern will be not to advance and seize,
always in war the more inspiring task, but to retain and hold. At best
she could come out of the war with no new gain, with nothing added
worth having to what she held on entering it. Victory would mean for
her only that she had secured a further spell of quiet in which to
consolida