calculation should be corrected accordingly. Instead of 128,000,000l. we must read something like 170,000,000l., against the 'appalling' German figure of 70,000,000l.

II. THE QUESTION OF DISARMAMENT

The burden of naval expenditure does not fall upon us alone, and if our own theories are correct, it only falls upon us as a consequence of the burdens assumed by other nations. How great the aggregate load has now become is not perhaps sufficiently present to our minds. The tables in Brassey's Naval Annual for 1904 yield the following results in round numbers:

British naval estimates (net, and exclusive
of borrowed money).

£

37,000,000

If we turn to the Annual for 1894, we find that the corresponding estimates yield a total of about 48 millions. The naval burden of Europe and America in time of peace has doubled in ten years. I take the year 1894 as a starting point because from that year may be said to date the great general expansion that has since taken place. The date 1899 has a significance of its own. In that year, as the figures in the Naval Annual show, the naval expenditure of the nations had gone up to 68 millions. In that year, as we all remember, the Czar issued his famous invitation to the Powers. The growing burden of armaments was the subject of the message, and the Czar proposed that the Powers should send delegates to a Conference, to consider the best way of dealing with so grave an evil. There never was the slightest doubt about the meaning of the proposal. The scheme was intended to bring about an international agreement for the reduction of armaments by land That and nothing else was the head and front of the Imperial message. Other things were included in its scope, but the main result of the Conference was to be: first, to stop the growth of military budgets, and secondly to bring about their reduction. 'The constant danger of the accumulation of war material,' said the Czar, in words echoed by Lord Salisbury,' under the armed peace of to-day is a crushing burden more and more difficult for the nations to bear. It is the supreme duty of all States to put some limits to their unceasing armaments.' The Conference was held on this basis. -we know with what result. So far as its main purpose was concerned it was a failure. The delegates did some most useful VOL, LVII-No. 335

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work, but they remitted back the question of disarmament to their principals, on the ground that they had not sufficient time to deal with it themselves, recording their opinion that a further examination of the question by the Powers would prove a great benefit to humanity.' I recall these facts, not in order to disparage the work of the Hague Conference or to question the sincerity of the Ministers of the day in various countries who accepted in principle the Czar's proposals, but in order to draw attention to what has happened since in relation to naval armaments, in which we are mainly interested. If the evil had become grievous in 1899 it is vastly greater now. The present Government in this country has again and again been invited to take the initiative in resuming the unfinished work of the Hague Conference. The answers given by Ministers have always confessed their readiness to join other Governments in a new Conference, but only if some other Government would take the initiative. The opportunity seemed to have come at last when President Roosevelt announced his intention to invite the Powers once more to take up the work left unfinished in 1900. But the detailed letter of the President, though it specified many important questions as ripe for international treatment, made no mention of disarmament. And the omission appears to have been deliberately intended. America is building up a new navy with considerable energy, and it is quite clear from the President's recent message that he at least is in no mood to consider any proposals tending to limitation. On the contrary the armaments which to the Czar and the Powers appeared in 1899 to be a gigantic evil, 'striking at the root of public prosperity,' are regarded by the President as the necessary machinery of a 'Peace of justice.' Disarmament is even denounced as a wicked thing in the present state of the world. And so we are back to the old doctrine, that great navies, and I suppose great armies, are the best securities for the peace of mankind.

The cause of disarmament is apparently therefore hopeless-at least for the present. I have never contended that we are under a greater obligation than other nations to lead the way in reduction of forces. But I still think that our supreme position on the sea would have made it easier for us than for some other Powers to propose once more to take up the Russian project seriously at some suitable time. In the meantime Europe is faced with the prospect of the continued increase of the evil which all Europe agreed in denouncing only six years ago. There seems to be no reason why the estimates which have doubled in the last ten years should not double again in the next-none except the financial exhaustion of some of the competitors. At present neither ourselves nor other nations have any fixed principles to guide us. What are now the two Powers whose strength should be the measure of our own minimum ? Is Russia to count as one? Is America to count as another?

III. THE COLONIAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE NAVY

Such being the international position, it is not surprising that questions which many of us have been unwilling even to consider, should be forcing themselves on the attention of the country. One such is the question of the Colonial contribution. I have felt it to be my duty for many years past to try at least to bring some comprehension of the facts to Parliament and the country. The few who from time to time discussed the question in the course of the sessional debates on the Navy generally found an appreciative listener in the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach used to say, like the German Finance Minister the other day, that 'we could not go on as we are doing.' The British Navy provides for the naval defence of the whole Empire. It protects Canada and Australia as it protects England or Scotland or Wales or Ireland. The cost is yearly increasing in the most alarming manner. Is it fair that the whole burden should be borne by the United Kingdom alone? Is it not right at all events that the people of this country should know what they are bearing?

Our chance appeared to have come when the so-called Colonial Conference assembled in 1902. It was a gathering of Colonial Premiers, not authorised by their Governments to do anything beyond friendly consultation with Ministers in this country. The case of the Navy was admirably presented in a memorandum from the Admiralty. But it was prejudiced, I venture to think, by its association with a military case neither so well founded nor so well presented. We have never been permitted to know anything about the discussions which took place at this conclave, and its utility in making known to us the views of the Colonies was practically nil. Nor was its practical result of any great importance. The Australasian Colonies had contributed before 1900 a small sum annually to meet the cost of a special squadron tied down rather rigorously to duty in Australian waters. The arrangement might be more correctly described as one by which Great Britain contributed the greater part of the cost of an Australian Squadron. As the result of the Conference the agreement was recast, the contribution was raised to 240,000l. per annum, 'for the maintenance of an Australasian Squadron and the establishment of a branch of the Royal Naval Reserve.' The local restrictions were at the same time relaxed. The Cape Colony and Natal also increased their contributions, with this general result that the whole British Empire now contributes to the cost of the Navy, which saves every member of it just one per cent. of the present year's expenditure. The contribution from India and the Colonies amounts now to 431,000l. This year's naval expenditure, all told, is not less than 43,000,000l. Canada

contributed nothing before the Conference and contributes nothing

now.

It is evident that if the old arrangement was less than fair to the United Kingdom, the injustice was hardly mitigated by the new, and it remained no less necessary than before to keep the public informed of the exact nature of the burden it was called upon to bear. When in the course of the last two years a deliberate attempt was made in another sphere of policy to persuade our people that they were doing less than justice to the Colonies, it became doubly necessary to make the naval position clear. Those who made the attempt in the House of Commons were rebuked by spokesmen of the Government in language which reads rather strangely to-day. We were told that 'these calculations were irritating to the Colonies,' that those who paid the piper called the tune,' and that 'this was not the time after the exertion made in the war for us to call the Colonies to account.' Such words were amazing enough at the time they were uttered, coming from men who had just failed in an attempt to do the very thing they now pretended to denounce, and failed, I suspect, by reason of their own maladroitness. What can we think of the tact which, after the exertions made in the war, reminded Canada that if Great Britain had exerted herself on the same scale as the Dominion did, the war would have cost us a few millions instead of more than two hundred? Those who remember all this must have rubbed their eyes when they read the report of the proceedings at the Foreign Office the other day. A deputation from the Imperial Federation (Defence) Committee waited upon the Prime Minister to urge the desirability of inviting the Colonies to take a larger share in the defence of the Empire. Sir Michael HicksBeach, who introduced the deputation, and Sir John Colomb, who stated its object, are quite consistent, but with these two exceptions I cannot find in the deputation the name of one political person who had previously countenanced the proposal. The position of the Prime Minister is remarkable. Down to the last days of last session he had steadily refused to entertain the idea of calling another Colonial Conference to consider fiscal questions. In the middle of the recess he suddenly announced a change of mind, and a Colonial Conference on fiscal questions became the cornerstone of his fiscal policy. And now comes Sir John Colomb with his deputation, pressing the Prime Minister to bring before the same Conference the necessity of further co-operation in the naval defence of the Empire. The whole argument turned on the Navy and the inadequacy of the Colonial contributions, and the suggestion made was that this subject not only should be laid before the proposed Conference, but should secure primary consideration.' And the Prime Minister, whose representative had been allowed a few weeks before to denounce the revival of the question as inopportune and

irritating, assented. It is true that in his nebulous utterances there is no sign of familiarity with the history, any more than with the rationale, of the question. A statesman who bases a serious argument on the metaphor that the Colonies are our children can hardly have realised the moral anomaly of a system which compels a working man or woman at home to provide for the free naval defence of a Colonial millionaire, possibly himself of foreign descent.

I am afraid the deputation will take little by its action. The proposed Colonial Conference is known by everybody to be the move of an embarrassed Premier in a desperate party struggle. The Imperial Federation (Defence) Committee is not a body of political partisans, and, as one who has hitherto regarded much of its work with sympathy, I regret that it should have taken a hand in the game. After all there is a Colonial side to the question, and some of its points have been well put by the Agent-General for West Australia in a public and, I suppose, semi-official letter to the press. The new system of contribution, the result of the last Conference, is only now coming into force. Why reopen the question before the year is much more than half out? Why badger Australia to give more until you have induced Canada to give something? To these may be added another pertinent query-What is the use of another Conference when we know nothing whatever of the views of the Colonial delegates to the last Conference? The only answer to these or similar questions is the Prime Minister's-that the Conference must be left free to discuss any subjects it pleases, including this. Whether the idea of including this question in the programme will not wreck the Conference, whether it is not encouraged because it will have that effect, are not questions for me in this paper. But I think I have said enough to show that no relief from our burdens is likely to be found in this direction.

IV. NAVIES AND THE PROTECTION OF COMMERCE

Is there hope in any other quarter?

One universal element in all arguments about all navies is the necessity of protecting commerce at sea. This is the argument on which the Admiralty Memorandum of 1902 rested its appeal to the Colonies for increased contributions. It is the main argument of the Imperial Federation (Defence) Committee. It figures largely in the article of Dr. Elkind and in the speeches of Count von Bülow and other statesmen who have to defend large naval estimates. It is an argument of great dynamic power. Everybody can not only understand but feel its force. And yet there are some considerations relevant to it which are usually ignored.

In the first place there is, I think, some misconception of the kind of defence extended to commerce by the Navy. Many people seem