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basin of the Zambesi, the watershed of the Niger, and one naturally could not afford to allow the Sultanate of Witu to fall into the hands of a potentially hostile Power. The imperial records were full of paramountcies, suzerainties, protectorates, leases, concessions, partitions, areas of interest, no-man’s-lands and related hinterlands—this last, an especially convenient conception, picked up from the German within the past ten years.
    Accounted for in these diverse ways, one acquisition seemed to lead logically to the next. Trade led to the defence of trade, exploration led to settlement, missionaries needed protection, where once the Liverpool merchants loaded their transports with slaves for America, now the Royal Navy needed bases to keep foreign slavery in check. It was like a monumental snowball, and though in the past the lesser campaigns of Empire had scarcely fired the passions of the public, now the British had suddenly become aware of the staggering momentum of it all. During Queen Victoria’s reign they had acquired eighteen major territories, and now scarcely a month passed without another satisfactory adjustment of relations.
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    Never since the world began, Seeley had written, did any nation assume anything like so much responsibility. ‘Never did so many vast questions in all parts of the globe, questions calling for all sorts of special knowledge and special training, depend upon the decision of a single public.’ Literally thousands of languages and dialects were spoken in the British Empire, from Hindustani, Chinese and Arabicto the shadowy remnants of Manx, still occasionally to be heard in hill farms on the Isle of Man. Every world problem was Britain’s problem. She was the greatest Hindu and the greatest Muslim Power, and there was no kind of climate or terrain with which Englishmen of the day were not familiar. The official lists of imperial appointments wonderfully demonstrated this range and versatility. What a state it must have seemed, when one could thumb through a red-bound register to see which of one’s fellow countrymen was Governor of Madras or Agent in Egypt, which was the officer in charge of the ex-Amir of Kabul, who commanded H.M.S. Alert on the North American Station, who was presently Inspector of Steam Boilers and Prime Movers in Bombay, and who it was in charge of the police post on the Yukon trail between Skagway and Dawson City!
    Never so much responsibility: but then at that moment of her history Britain was settled in the habit of authority—authority in the family, in the church, in social affairs, even in politics. It was the last heyday of the patricians. British Governments, for all the liberalizing influences of reform, were still paternally authoritarian, and the English posture abroad was habitually one of command. To the educated Englishman responsibility came naturally. No other Power had been so strong for so long, so stable in its institutions and so victorious in its wars: and Britain’s naval supremacy really did give the country a measure of universal sovereignty, that immemorial dream of conquerors. In theory no other state could ship an army across the seas without British consent, and in practice the merchant shipping of the rest of the world was largely dependent upon British cables and coaling stations. The presence of the sea, at once insulating the Mother Country and linking it with the Empire, gave the British an imperial confidence. ‘I do not say the French cannot come,’ as Admiral St Vincent had once remarked; ‘I only say they cannot come by sea.’
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    So it looked to the British. By means complex and often shadowy, they had acquired a quarter of the world, and could behave with privileged immunity in much of the rest. There was a good deal ofbrag to the Britain of the nineties, but then there really was a good deal to brag about. It was expressive of the size and variety of the British Empire that papers marked S.L. often went astray in