Mr. Vernon Harcourt has formulated his theory of National Defences
in a speech to the United Service Institution. He says that if Prussia, Russia, France, and America united to attack us, we should still have more ironclads than the allies, and that the transport of an army equal to an invasion would require a number • of transports they could not obtain,—an assertion questioned by Sir Shafto Adair, who says only one steamer and two transports are necessary for every thousand men. Mr. Harcourt contended therefore that a large army was not necessary for defence, and would apparently limit us to 50,000 men. Granting his conditions, that we cannot be attacked except in Great Britain, and that our feet can always prevent a landing, he may be right ; but then these conditions are mere assumptions, the fact being that; our fleet might be overloaded by the defence of our forty-two separate possessions, or rendered powerless by new discoveries in science, and that we may be attacked in Canada, Gibraltar, Belgium, and India, that is by land, much more easily than in England. To argue that it is better not to be prepared against such contingencies is to argue that insurance is waste of money.
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