The Secretary of the American Navy curiously confirms the view
which we recently put forward about the condition of our own. We said that despite all the talk in Parliament we had now no reason to fear America or any other maritime power, and were accused of talking buncombe. The American Secretary now declares that our war-vessels are models of strength and swiftness ; that we have 191 of them to 43 American, besides the flying squadron ; and that "the first sign of a foreign war would send the American Navy hurrying ignominiously to their own shores." All that does not make an American war less formidable, for forty millions of energetic men, situated as they are, can improvise anything ; but it does show that for the present we are well pre- pared to cope with the most formidable of maritime powers. To hear some people talk, an American war would not only be the greatest calamity to the world—which is quite true—but the signal for the extinction of Great Britain.
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