ture, do not even cover the cost of squadrons which could be distributed on a sounder basis if the contributions did not exist. This last condition was fulfilled in the case of Canada. We were thus enabled to withdraw ships from both sides of North America, and to reduce Halifax and Esquimalt to inexpensive cadres. As nations become richer, they act very much as individuals in devoting more attention to insurance. The advantage of a common navy over separate ones, both from the point of view of efficiency and economy, are so obvious that there need be no fear of a permanent tendency to create separate navies. The future might be safeguarded if far-seeing statesmen will bring colonial representatives more and more into our councils. At present the Colonies resemble the past history of the United States in looking inwards to internal development. The time, surely, will come with them also when their eyes will turn outwards. Their markets and sea communications will appeal to them with a more insistent force. They will see how useless is a weak detached force, and how strong is a combined one. 'Only numbers can annihilate,' said Nelson; and even when the Colonies are as rich as Holland, Denmark, Spain, or Belgium, they cannot hope to do better than those countries which are unable to afford battleships.
The so-called battleships of Austria are quite unfit to lie in the line of battle, while to build a Dreadnought outside Great Britain or Germany would probably cost about two and a half millions sterling, or nearly as much as we raise by a penny on the income tax. Indeed, one of the most significant changes since Nelson's time, when we found it indispensable that we should deal with the battleships of the Portuguese and Danish navies, is that the business of owning battleships has become far too expensive for any but the seven great maritime Powers, and of these Italy, in spite of spasmodic programmes, tends to drop out of the race. For the cost of one Dreadnought we could have obtained about eighteen of Nelson's Victory type, or
