Why do English innate political conceptions of popular representative Government, of the balance of law and liberty, prevail in North America from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific? Because the command of the sea at the decisive era belonged to Great Britain. In India and Egypt administrative efficiency has taken the place of a welter of tyranny, feudal struggle, and bloodshed, achieving thereby the comparative welfare of the once harried populations. What underlies this administrative efficiency? The British Navy, assuring in the first place British control and thereafter communication with the home country, whence comes the local power without which administration everywhere is futile. What, at the moment when the Monroe doctrine was proclaimed, insured beyond peradventure the immunity from foreign oppression of the Spanish-American colonies in their struggle for independence? The command of the sea by Great Britain, backed by the feeble Navy but imposing strategic position of the United States, with her swarm of potential commerce-destroyers, which, a decade before, had harassed the trade even of the Mistress of the Seas.
In concluding, therefore, we see how the British Navy, having served Great Britain and the British Empire so efficiently and so well in every interest and possession, fighting constantly against every stealthy device of the enemy, has served the Allies not less well and worthily. And we discover, too, that the Navy is ever friendly to neutral Powers, and that the command of the sea which it exercises in the war is the panoply of freedom and liberty throughout the world.
[Illustration: I. THE CENTRE OF SEA POWER: THE NORTH SEA]
[Illustration: II. THE GRASP OF THE MEDITERRANEAN—LAND AND SEA POWER]
=THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME= =_By John Buchan_=
“A clear and brilliant presentation of the whole vast maneuver and its tactical and strategic development.”—_Springfield Republican._
=THE GERMAN FURY IN BELGIUM= =_By L. Mokveld_=
Written by an eye-witness, who chronicles not what he heard, but what he saw.
=THE GERMAN TERROR IN BELGIUM= =_By Arnold J. Toynbee_=
The treatment of the civil population in the districts overrun by the German armies.