National DefencesMacmillan and Company, limited, 1897 - 209 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
able adequate Admiral Colomb advantage Aldershot alliance ammunition army artillery attack attempt Austria battalions abroad blockade Britain British campaign Captain Mahan chapter coal coaling-stations Colonies command commerce Continent Crimean War danger difficulty Dingaan duty effect efficiency Empire enlist enormous Europe expenditure fact fleet force France French frontier garrison Germany Government guns harbours Herat high explosives home defence House of Commons importance India invasion islands Jim Jones land least Lord Charles Lord Charles Beresford Lough Swilly matter means military Napoleon National Defence nature naval power necessary officers organisation peace ports position possess possible present purpose railway realise recruits regiments Reserve Russia sailors sea power secure ships Sir Charles Dilke Sir Geoffrey Hornby Sir George Tryon soldiers statesmen stations strength supplies supreme Navy tend things Thursfield tion transport troops vast whole
Popular passages
Page 6 - Our defences at home and abroad at the present moment are in an unsatisfactory condition, and our military forces are not organised or equipped as they should be to guarantee even the safety of the capital in which we are at the present moment.
Page 102 - Under these circumstances we must look more to our Army. We " think its present strength is barely sufficient for a period of peace, " and the question is, how we can most readily and speedily increase " it through the means of a reserve force consisting of men who have " already received that training in its ranks, but may have fallen " back into the ordinary duties and callings of civil life.
Page 187 - ... preconcerted rendezvous, there to constitute an organized fleet capable of acting on the offensive. Now, a guerre de course is always a vexatious incident of naval warfare, and often a very costly one to the naval Power attacked. But it has never yet sufficed by itself to determine the broad strategic issues of maritime conflict ; and, according to Captain Mahan, it never can. It is even doubtful whether in these days of swift steam navigation it is likely to be so destructive as it was in the...
Page 178 - There is always food enough in the country to maintain its population for six months or more. But with our mills standing, our forges silent, our furnaces cold, and our mines closed, where is the teeming industrial population of our land to find the wherewithal to buy its food ? There is no arguing with an empty belly. The working man is now in the last resort the arbiter of our fate.