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The reality and imminence of "a yellow peril" was another of his devices for stimulating the efforts of his countrymen. Thus the new policy was expansion, evolution as a world-power, colonisation; and each in turn brought him up against the older arrangement of European Powers. His colonial policy, especially in Africa, led to collisions with both France and Great Britain.
We have all our own brain and body on which to wreak our personality, but this is not enough; we must extend our personality further, just as though we were a colonising world-power intoxicated by the idea of the 'white man's burden. One of the central secrets of efficient daily living is to leave our daily companions alone a great deal more than we do, and attend to ourselves.
Between him and that emblem of world-power the press was thick, for around it at bay were gathered many valiant men of Spain, fighting for their own. They who by the law of the strong were to inherit from them had yet to break that phalanx. Sedley threw himself forward, beat down a veteran of the Indies, swept on towards the goal of that hated banner.
On the other hand, the Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, voiced the opinions of the governing class and the German Navy League when he declared that the demand for a great navy originated in the ambition of the German nation to become a World-Power . The Bill passed; and thenceforth the United Kingdom and Germany became declared rivals at sea.
And why should what they were enabled to achieve be impossible again for other nations who have succeeded them in their world-power? The spirit of the age is ever changing, yet it is only a regularly recurring return of the same conditions, just as the planets in the heavens, ever again in their orbit, come back to their old positions."
But the true basis of her world-power lay on the sea. It was by her command of the sea that such an empire could alone be possible; nor was it possible so long as she commanded the sea for all the armies of the Bourbon powers to rob her of it. And at this moment the command of the seas again became her own.
Others might control for a time a continent; only those who command the sea can dispose of the destinies of the world. But while an essential factor in world-power, the command of the sea is not its sum; and the war throughout its course illustrated the weakness of attack by sea against a well-defended coast.
Imagine that in my voice are mingled the voices of your ancestors from dim antiquity, who with their bodies opposed the on-rushing dominion of the world-power of Rome, who with their blood won the independence of the mountains, plains, and streams which, under your governance, have become the booty of the stranger.
"As that very intelligent American officer, Admiral Mahan, has told us, the sea-power is world-power, and there you have sea-power; but that is not the limit of the capabilities of Mr Castellan's invention, according to the specifications which I have read, and on the strength of which I have asked him to give us this demonstration of its powers. He calls it, as you know, the Flying Fish.
When the future of our Dominions is secure, the part of England as a World-Power will have been played to a successful issue, and we may be content with a position more consonant with the small area of these islands.
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