never sufficed to silence the tongue of slander. Wellington was attacked by the Common Council of London during the Peninsular war; the victor of St. Vincent was charged with dereliction of duty; and in England's darkest days of 1797, when the King and Queen went to St. Paul's to render thanks for three great naval victories, the mob hooted in the streets "the pilot who weathered the storm ".

IX.

HAS GREAT BRITAIN CEASED TO BE AN

66

ISLAND?1

IN a recent speech Lord Northcliffe remarked that the flying machine " has entirely changed the position of our (sic) kingdom from being an island to being part of the Continent". The observation, or something like it, has been made by others less interested in aircraft than Lord Northcliffe, and bids fair to become one of those commonplaces, the constant repetition of which does duty with most of us for original ideas of our own and for the critical examination of other people's. Before, however, we suffer the paradox to pass into the common stock of truisms, it may be worth while examining its passports and inquiring what it means.

Literally, of course, it is nonsense; an island is a tract of land completely surrounded by water, but not big enough to be called a continent. No one proposes to call Great Britain a continent, or to drain the Narrow Seas; and Great Britain will therefore continue to be an island in the literal sense, whatever Lord Northcliffe may say or Zeppelins may do. But the statement is meant to be metaphorical, and there's the rub; for it is impossible to define with any ex

1 "Westminster Gazette," 11 July, 1916.

actitude a metaphorical meaning, and in this metaphorical sense "an island" is clearly becoming one of those terms like "command of the sea" and "a fleet in being," of which it has been said that when used at random they cover a perfect morass of loose thinking. We are painfully aware of the fact that Zeppelins and aeroplanes can drop bombs on English soil, and we put ourselves to considerable inconvenience and expense to disconcert these enemy attacks. But to deduce from them the sweeping generalization that Britain is ceasing to be an island is a logical process which requires sifting.

We have never in any great war, a category from which the Crimean and Colonial wars must be excluded, been entirely immune from naval bombardment or from raids. But if that liability has robbed us of insular security, that is an advantage we have never enjoyed. It is true that the risk was confined to our coasts, but its extension by Zeppelins to inland districts is not in itself sufficient to make Great Britain part of the Continent. What then has been the military meaning of our insular security? Surely, that Great Britain could not be conquered or invaded so long as she retained command of the seas, and was thus free from the fears that haunted Continental nations. If there is any meaning in the contention that Britain has ceased to be an island and become part of the Continent of Europe, it cannot be merely that we are liable to Zeppelin raids, but that lack of command of the air exposes us to those risks of conquest and invasion to which we should be liable if we lost command of the sea or were joined to the Continent by land. The alarm arises from an implied

analogy between the sea and the air, and from a confusion between the military possibilities of two distinct elements. It is really a question of physics, and the confusion is profound, because so long as the specific gravity of water remains eight hundred times as great as that of air, there can be no analogy between seapower and air-power, and no comparison between the risks involved in the loss of command of the sea and those incurred by lack of command of the air.

The point requires some amplification. Conquest is largely a matter of weight. Apart from the doubtful possibility of starving a great Continental country into submission, you cannot hope to conquer it nowadays unless you can transport on to its territory a million tons of human and other material. Transport on such a scale is easier over land than over sea, and that is one of the causes of insular security. It is impossible in the air, and the absence of air-power must remain a trifling disadvantage compared with absence of sea-power. Sea-power depends upon the specific gravity of water; ironclads can only float because air is lighter than water. But, air being lighter than water, an ironclad can, barring accidents, float for an indefinite period. Merely to float costs it no effort and requires no artificial aid; and the enormous disproportion between the weight of air and the weight of water enables a ship to carry tens of thousands of tons. Aircraft, on the other hand, require artificial inspiration or propulsion to keep them up at all, and their lifting capacity is confined to narrow limits by the lightness of the element in which they move. A super-Dreadnought can carry ten 15-in. guns and a crew of 1000 men, in addition to armour-plate weigh

ing thousands of tons, while a liner can transport thousands of troops at a time. A Zeppelin the same size as a liner would require a hundred voyages to transport the troops a liner carries on one; it is practically unprotected, and no conceivable airship could lift a really heavy gun. What lifting power a Zeppelin possesses is only purchased by an expanse of unprotected surface which condemns its crew to nocturnal raids and to altitudes in which accurate aim is not a possibility. Aeroplanes are more precise; but wars cannot be won by an arm which cannot stand fire, transport troops, artillery, and equipment, or maintain communications. It is hardly more rational to contend that the dropping of bombs from Zeppelins and aeroplanes has made England part of the Continent than it would be to deny our insularity on the ground that we are visited by thunderstorms from France.

The sea does not, of course, protect us from airattacks; and inasmuch as liability to air-attack is a risk we run in common with Continental countries, it might be said that we are to that extent a partner with the Continent. But it is not Germany's aircraft which have occupied French territory and conquered most of Belgium; it is German troops and heavy guns, and France and Belgium would pay a heavy price to gain our insular security which we say is nonexistent. Moreover, the sea is no protection in itself; if it shields us from field howitzers, it exposes our coasts to the fire of naval guns. Switzerland is protected, but we are not, from naval attack. In spite of German whimpers, the sea is perfectly neutral, and the German fleet need violate no neutrality in order to launch an attack on British shores. It is not the