TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SPITHEAD REVIEW.
" PE Queen's Navy exceeds all others in the world for three things, viz., beauty, strength, and safety. For beauty they are so many Royal Palaces ; for strength (no part of the world having such iron and timber as England bath) so many moving castles and barbicans ; and for safety they are the most defensive walls of the realm. Amongst the ships of other nations, they are like lions among silly beasts or falcons among fe'arful fowle." So said—with one word altered—Lord Coke, a man whom the world in general regards as a dull old lawyer, but who was, in fact, a great master of English. Those who had the good fortune to be present at Spithead on Saturday, and to watch through all the long avenues of the fleet the glory and the might of our naval power, cannot have Sailed to experience the almost lyric feeling which inspired Lord Coke. A huge town was afloat on the waters, but it was not a town of houses but of castles, and its in- habitants were not industrious artisans or smiling trades- men but armed men. Some fifty thousand sailors and sea-soldiers lined the streets of that awe-inspiring and majestic city of the sea. The fleet had cost millions upon millions, and it was capable of destroying still more millions of money's-worth upon sea or land. Yet it was gathered there for no aggressive purpose. The London Fire Brigade would be turned out with as much menace to foreign States. The city was a war city, no doubt, but it was at the same time a city of defence, not of attack. As one gazed at the vast, rock-like masses of the battle- ships or the graceful curves of the cruisers, one could not fail to feel that the praise of beauty belongs to the Queen's ships now as it did in the days of Elizabeth.
It is true that it is not the same beauty, but beauty is there as of old,—the beauty of strength and of swiftness, of well-ordered parts, of life and of vigour. Even beauty of form in the ordinary sense was often present, especially in the newest ships. The Powerful ' and the Terrible,' the newest, the strongest, and the fleetest of our cruisers, have to the fullest extent the beauty of power, of magnitude, and of proportion. They stand high enough out of the water to possess thatpresence which a ship needs as much as an individual, and they give, to a degree which cannot possibly be described, the sense of energy and force. They looked on Saturday like two great bloodhounds in leash ;—still and controlled, and yet somehow full of restless power. A word, one knew, would set them steaming east or west at the speed of a railway train, through wave and storm, not to be stopped or denied till their appointed task had been accomplished. They were couched for the moment at the feet of England, but in an instant, and if need were, they could spring on a foe and strike him down even at the ends of the earth. Of the strength of our present Fleet what can be said that has not been said a thousand times already ? The ships at Spithead were all of them sound and good, and fit for practical work, and most of them contained the very last scientific inventions and improvements. It is not a matter of boasting to say that the fleet at Spithead would have been able to beat any navy or combination of navies that could be brought against it within the next six months. But be it remembered that the Jubilee fleet was not got to gether by bringing our ships from all the quarters of the globe. At the moment that the Royal salute was fired we had the strongest fleet we have had in the Mediterranean for years, as well as strong squadrons in all our regular stations. To make a strong show at Spithead we did not weaken a single post abroad. As a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette put it, the ships at Spitbead were only the Channel fleet plus our surplus stock. To provide fully for our Imperial needs in all the seven seas, and then to have the Jubilee fleet over, was indeed a triumph of which the nation may be proud. Lord Coke's final claim for the Queen's Navy was well sustained by the Spithead fleet. No one could look at them and doubt that they were "the most defensive walls of the realm," and that with them to guard us we need no bulwarks of earth or stone and " no guns along the steep."
That the Review will have done a good deal to convince the public of the use and need for a strong Navy, we cannot doubt. In the first place, it is evident to all that foreign Powers have been enormously struckbythe outward and visible signs of naval power which we have just given them. The talk about England being an effete Power just on the point of collapse has utterly died away. Only a few weeks ago a very widely circulated and popular French newspaper expressed great admiration for the clever and adroit way in which England managed her foreign policy. By her skilful diplomacy she contrived to hide her essential weakness, and to hide also the fact that her power bad departed. It would be impossible to find such. a note now in the comments either of the French or of the German Press. They all agree in admitting the great power secured to England by her Navy. Let us hope that our own people will understand also, and will take the lesson to heart. They want, without doubt, to be great and powerful and respected. The Spithead Review should teach them how to obtain these things. It should, in fact, be a general reminder to them that it is on sea-power, and on sea-power alone, that in the last resort rests their great- ness and strength. Other things may increase their great- ness and strength, but sea-power is the essential. Without that we are nothing. The'words of the statute which regu- lates the discipline in the Navy put the matter quite plainly. " Whereas," says 29 and 30 Viet. cap. ix., " it is expedient to amend the law relating to the government of the Navy, whereon, under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety, and strength of the Kingdom chiefly depend." It is on the Navy that, under God, the wealth, safety, and strength of England depend, and the more clearly the nation can be made to recognise the fact, the better. It does half recognise it, but there is always a fear of its forgetting,—the fear that it may nod and let the sceptre of Neptune fall out o2 its hands. But if it does so fall, it will be lost for ever. The sceptre is of gold, and will sink, never to be recovered. We have written in praise of our fleet at Spitbead, but we do not want to boast. We are strong at sea for the moment, but unless we are vigilant we shall not remain so long. A great Navy cannot be bought, like-sugar, by the ton, and then forgotten. If it is to be worth anything it requires ceaseless care and watching. This it can get from the nation alone. Let those, then, who have watched and helped for the last three years continue to take heed for the Navy. Let them see, above all things, that our supply of men does not fail us. We have got the ships,—not to have men enough to man them would indeed be to perpetrate a capital blunder in tho art of national defence. But this is not an apology for the Navy League, though that body has done and is doing most excellent work. Our object is to congratulate the English people on the fact that they have a great and powerful Fleet, and that foreign nations have taken note of that fact, and further to remind them not to lose this inestimable blessing by carelessness and parsimony. After all, there is not a soul in the land, however pacifically inclined, who need object to the power of our Navy. The Queen's ships menace no foreign country, and if they police the seas, police them for the benefit, not of Englishmen alone, but of all the world. No one, that is, now that we have got a really strong Navy, wants to use it for anything but the legitimate purpose of guarding our own shores and protecting our Colonies and distant possessions. Britain must be the mistress of the seas, but she is not and never will be the tyrant.
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