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How many people, even among Canadians born and bred, know that there have already been two local Canadian navies of different kinds and two Canadian branches of Imperial navies oversea; that in 1697 a naval battle was fought in the waters of Hudson Bay, opposite Port Nelson; that seigneurial grants during the French régime made reservations of man-of-war oak for the service of the crown; that while Bougainville, the famous French circumnavigator, was trying to keep Wolfe out of Quebec, Captain Cook, the famous British circumnavigator, was trying to help him in; that there was steamer transport in the War of 1812; that the first steam man-of-war to fire a shot in action was launched on the St Lawrence four years before the first railway in Canada was working; that just before Confederation more than half the citizens of the ancient capital were directly dependent on ship-building and nearly all the rest on shipping; and that the Canadian fisheries of the present day are the most important in the world?
To the Allied navies also, in spite of warnings from a few more far-sighted officers, their use for this purpose came as a complete surprise. New methods had to be devised, new weapons invented, new types of ship built and old ones put to uses for which they were not intended in short, a whole new system of warfare inaugurated amidst the preoccupations of war.
For after these there were no navies of any account in Hellas till the expedition of Xerxes; Aegina, Athens, and others may have possessed a few vessels, but they were principally fifty-oars.
You see we use it for police purposes. We do not care for the sea. Our strength is in our population, which will soon be a billion. Thanks to you, we are equipped with all modern war-machinery. Send your navies. We will not notice them. Send your punitive expeditions, but first remember France. To land half a million soldiers on our shores would strain the resources of any of you.
The older causes of war lay in pressure of population, the temptation of better lands, racial hatreds or ambitions, religious fanaticism, dynastic aims, and imperialism. Some of these remain. The chief modern source of trouble is trade rivalry, with which imperialism is closely interwoven and trade rivalry makes enemies of old friends. There is, therefore, a place for navies still.
Should the war last for years as wars of old, and Port Nelson become a great grain port as for three centuries it has been the greatest fur port of the world, the navies of Europe may yet thunder at one another along Hudson Bay's shallow shores, as French and English fought there all through the seventeenth century. The Hudson Bay railroad hung in mid-air for almost a quarter century.
I am thinking now of Formosa, that strange land of adventure where the veriest good-for-nothings, stranded by chance, have "owned navies and mounted the steps of thrones," and where he spent some time in 1864 inspecting the Custom Houses.
Where else upon earth, at that day, was there half so much liberty as was thus guaranteed? The congress of the Netherlands, according to their Magna Charta, had power to levy all taxes, to regulate commerce and manufactures, to declare war, to coin money, to raise armies and navies.
It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armaments and the coöperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programs of military preparation.
While the people of Como were thus straining every nerve to complete a pious work, which at the same time is one of the most perfect masterpieces of Italian art, their lovely lake was turned into a pirate's stronghold, and its green waves stained with slaughter of conflicting navies. So curious is this episode in the history of the Larian lake that it is worth while to treat of it at some length.
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