certain centrifugal forces now at work, the problem of the Pacific, should the United States decide to play a "lone hand," will be solved. It will become an American lake, probably after a terrible struggle in which the pretensions of the Yellow Races will be shattered, possibly after another fratricidal struggle in which the British possessions in the Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand, equally with Canada, will be forced to obedience.

But is there any necessity to consider the United States and the British Empire as playing mutually hostile parts in the Pacific? They have been the best of friends there in the past. They have many good reasons to remain friends in the future. A discussion as to whether the Pacific Ocean is destined to be controlled by the American or by the British Power could be reasonably ended with the query: Why not by an Anglo-Celtic union representing both?

An Anglo-Celtic alliance embracing Great Britain, the United States and the British Dominions, would settle in the best way the problem of the Pacific. No possible combination, Asiatic, European, or Asia-European, could threaten its position. But there are certain difficulties in the way, which will be discussed later. For the present, it has only to be insisted that both Powers are potential rather than actual masters of the Pacific. Neither in the case of Great Britain nor of the United States is a great Pacific force at the moment established. After her treaty with Japan, Great Britain abandoned for a while the idea of maintaining any serious naval strength in the Pacific. The warships she maintained there, on the Australian station and elsewhere, had no fighting value against modern armaments, and were kept in the Pacific as a step towards the scrap-heap. That policy has since been reversed, and the joint efforts of Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand directed towards re-establishing British Pacific naval strength. At the moment, however, the actual British naval force in the Pacific is inconsiderable, if obsolete or obsolescent vessels are ruled out of consideration. The United States also has no present naval force in the Pacific that could contest the issue with even a fraction of the Japanese navy. Clearly, too, she has no intention of attempting the organisation of a powerful Pacific Fleet separate from her Atlantic Fleet, but aims at the bolder policy of holding her interests in both oceans by one great Fleet which will use the Panama Canal to mobilise at an emergency in either.

If the resources of the present with their probable growth in the future are taken into account, Great Britain and the United States will appear as massing enormous naval and military forces in the Pacific. The preponderance of naval force will be probably on the side of the United States for very many years—since it is improbable that Great Britain will ever be able to detach any great proportion of her Fleet from European waters and her Pacific naval force will be comprised mainly of levies from Australia and New Zealand, and possibly Canada, India, and South Africa. The preponderance of military force will be probably on the side of Great Britain, taking into count the citizen armies of Australia and New Zealand (and possibly of Canada) and the great forces available in India. Complete harmony between Great Britain and the United States in the Pacific would thus give the hegemony of the ocean to the Anglo-Saxon race. Rivalry between them might lead to another result. In the natural course of events that "other result" might be Asiatic dominion in one form or another.

These factors in Pacific rivalry will be discussed in detail in the following chapters.

CHAPTER II

RUSSIA IN THE PACIFIC

Russia, for generations the victim of Asia, when at last she had won to national greatness, was impelled by pressure from the West rather than by a sense of requital to turn back the tide of invasion. That pressure from the West was due to a misunderstanding in which Great Britain led the way, and which the late Lord Salisbury happily described when he stated that England "had backed the wrong horse" in opposing Russia and in aiding Turkey against her.

Russia, because she broke Napoleon's career of victory by her power of resistance, a power which was founded on a formlessness of national life rather than a great military strength, was credited by Europe with a fabulous might. Properly understood, the successful Russian resistance to the greatest of modern captains was akin to that of an earthwork which absorbs the sharpest blows of artillery and remains unmoved, almost unharmed. But it was misinterpreted, and a mental conception formed of the Russian earthwork as a mobile, aggressive force eager to move forward and to overwhelm Europe. Russia's feat of beating back the tide of Napoleonic invasion was merely the triumph of a low biological type of national organism. Yet it inspired Europe with a mighty fear. The "Colossus of the North" came into being to haunt every Chancellery.

Nowhere was the fear felt more acutely than in Great Britain. It is a necessary consequence of the British Imperial expansion of the past, an expansion that came about very often in spite of the Mother Country's reluctance and even hostility, that Great Britain must now always view with distrust, with suspicion, that country which is the greatest of the European Continental Powers for the time being, whether it be France, Russia, or Germany. If British foreign policy is examined carefully it will be found to have been based on that guiding principle for many generations. Whatever nation appears to aim at a supreme position in Europe must be confronted by Great Britain.

Sometimes British statesmen, following instinctively a course which was set for them by force of circumstances, have not recognised the real reason of their actions. They have imagined that there was some ethical warrant for the desire for a European "balance of power." They have seen in the malignant disposition of whatever nation was the greatest Power in Europe for the time being a just prompting to arrange restraining coalitions, to wage crippling wars. But the truth is that the British race, with so much that is desirable of the earth under its flag, with indeed almost all the good empty lands in its keeping, must be jealous of the next European Power. On the other hand, every growing Power in Europe must look with envy on the rich claim which one prospector, and that one not the earliest, has pegged out in the open fields of the world. Thus between Great Britain and the next European Power in rank there is always a mutual jealousy. The growing Power is credited with a desire to seize the rich lands of the British Empire; and generally has the desire. The holding Power is apprehensive of every step forward of any rival, seeing in it a threat to her Empire's security. There is such a thing in this world as being too rich to be comfortable. That is Great Britain's national position.

Thus when the power of France was broken and Napoleon was safely shut up in St Helena, the British nation, relieved of one dread, promptly found another. Russia was credited with designs on India. She was supposed to be moving south towards the Mediterranean, and her object in seeking to be established there was obviously to challenge British naval supremacy, and to capture British overseas colonies. British diplomacy devoted itself sternly to the task of checkmating Russia. Russia, the big blundering amorphous nation, to whom England had given, some generations before, early promptings to national organisation, and who now sprawled clumsily across Europe groping for a way out of her ice-chains