CHAPTERXXVI.AN EMPIRE: OCEAN-WIDE

“This Royal throne of kings; this sceptred Isle;This earth of majesty; this seat of Mars;*****This happy breed of men; this little world;This precious stone, set in a silver sea.”King RichardII.

“This Royal throne of kings; this sceptred Isle;This earth of majesty; this seat of Mars;*****This happy breed of men; this little world;This precious stone, set in a silver sea.”

“This Royal throne of kings; this sceptred Isle;

This earth of majesty; this seat of Mars;

*****

This happy breed of men; this little world;

This precious stone, set in a silver sea.”

King RichardII.

“Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,But over the scud and the palm trees an English flag was flown.”Rudyard Kipling.

“Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,But over the scud and the palm trees an English flag was flown.”

“Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,

But over the scud and the palm trees an English flag was flown.”

Rudyard Kipling.

“See what a glorious throng they come,Turned to their ancient Home,The Children of our England.”—Lewis Morris.

“See what a glorious throng they come,

Turned to their ancient Home,

The Children of our England.”—Lewis Morris.

DEEP down under the sea, on the sloping ocean-floor, amid dead vegetable and animal remains, lie strange snake-like forms. Not natural creations, but made by man and placed there for his own benefit.

Up to the year 1840 anything in the shape of a submarine telegraph was not only non-existent, but, so far as is known, it had not even been thought of.

Some wild dreams may have been indulged in here or there; but if so, the dreamers kepttheir dreams to themselves. On land the electric telegraph was getting into wider and wider use. The bare idea, however, of so uniting lands separated by the ocean had not been brought forward.

Between 1840 and 1850 the notion did come up, and was discussed. A small attempt was made in America, with what may be called a baby-cable, across a slight extent of water, near land. The Professor who made this experiment[13]ventured on a prediction that, in days to come, an electric cable might unite Great Britain and America. His friends probably pitied him as a visionary.

[13]ProfessorS. F. B. Morse.

Through that decade there was no further advance. But in 1850 another step was taken. The first “open-sea” submarine cable was laid down between Dover and Calais; one of copper wire, covered with gutta-percha, outside which was a thick leaden tube.

For the moment a slender line joined England to the Continent.

Then an enterprising French fisherman, in quest of conger-eels, caught the cable in his powerful hook, and hauled it up. He took it for a stout sea-weed stem, and tried the effect of anibble. It was not appetising, and he flung it back into the water. Somewhat later, however, he hooked it up again; and this time he secured his spoil, cutting off a length, which he carried to his native town, as a rare ocean-curiosity.

Naturally, no further telegraphic messages could be exchanged between the two countries.

Nothing daunted, the projectors started afresh; made another cable; and put that down. This time they met with good success; and since 1851 England and France have talked in confidential whispers below the Channel.

Many more cables under the sea were laid in different places with success. But all these were short ones.

A great scheme, dimly foretold in 1842 by one far-sighted American, was stirring. Why should not the New World be united to the Old, even as Great Britain was united to the Continent? Why not bind Europe and America together by cables beneath the Ocean?

Not twenty or forty or sixty miles would this require, but two thousand miles of cable. And in any part of those two thousand miles, one slight break, one little flaw, would undo the whole. The plan meant thousands of pounds risked, with perhaps no return.

Yet it was persevered in. Before the close of 1857, that year of Indian Mutiny horrors, the first attempt was made. Four hundred miles of cable slid safely down, and lay upon the ocean-bed. Then as it ran out from the ship, it snapped. That was a failure.

Next year another attempt was made. Two ships, each bearing half of the great coil, came together in the middle of the Atlantic, and “spliced” the ends. After which they parted, one going east, one going west, each laying its own share. But again the cable broke.

Enough remained on hand to supply the place of the lost length. A third effort followed quickly. For a while success seemed to crown perseverance. The whole cable was safely down; and messages were exchanged. Whispers from the Old World to the New went under two thousand miles of ocean, and answers came back. Then the wire ceased to speak. In some manner, connection was severed.

Time passed, and for a space no more was done. But in 1864 theGreat Easternstarted, carrying the whole of a new and much stronger cable—more than two thousand two hundred miles long; and of so solid a make that each mile of it weighed three thousand pounds.

Once again disappointment lay ahead. More than half the task had been accomplished, when the cable broke anew, the lower end as usual vanishing.

Many days the great ship hovered round, hunting for that lost line; but she had to give up the quest, and to go home. A year later, however, the search was resumed; and the cable, lying quietly upon the ocean-bed more than two miles below, was found and pulled up by powerful grapnels.

Not yet was man beaten in his contest with the Ocean. It takes a good deal of beating to make the Anglo-Saxon give in. Wind and wave, depth and distance, all were against him; but he went on. The plan had to be carried out. He meant to see this thing through. He had made up his mind to have his verbal under-sea intercourse, between Continent and Continent.

And at last he had his way. A new cable was manufactured; and this time, not only was it laid safely, but it held good.

Side by side with the new was laid also the old lost cable, which had been fished up from the deep. So a double line of connection existed between Great Britain and her Daughter-land across the Atlantic.

That aim fulfilled, after so much of failure and discouragement, other cables were put down in many other parts of the world. Beneath the sea in all directions they lie, joining countries widely separated.

A year or two ago it was reckoned that the full extent of all submarine cables in the world had already reached a grand total of about two hundred thousand miles. Not much more will bring it to a length which might span the distance between Earth and Moon.

Lately a splendid new scheme has come up, and has been adopted. This is—to unite the entire British Empire by one vast “All-British” telegraphic system. As is the nervous system to a man, so will be the said telegraphic system to the Empire.

At present many telegrams have to be sent to outlying parts through foreign dominions—which is much as though a man’s brain should have to send messages to his fingers through another man’s arm. But when once this scheme has become a reality, the Mother-land will be able to convey, under the broadest ocean-reaches, to any of her Children in distant parts, her requests, her warnings, her sympathy, her secrets, her congratulations, without fear of being heard byoutsiders; without risk of having her utterances stopped by perhaps “unfriendly” hands, at some critical moment.

In this vast plan the chief cable will cover a distance of nearly nine thousand miles; and that will include a single stretch from Vancouver to Fanning Island, more than half as long again as the wire between Ireland and the United States, or about three thousand five hundred miles.

No surprise need be felt at the frequent breaking of cables, strong though they may be.

The great depth of water into which they have to be lowered, their own weight, the increased difficulties attendant upon stormy weather, and—when once they are down—the uneven character of the ocean-bed, have all to be reckoned with.

Careful previous soundings are of course made, with a view to avoiding, if possible, abrupt descents and precipitous breaks in the line where the cable is to be. One can easily understand how, if a cable lies taut across from one ridge to another, it may snap with its own weight.

But even upon a fairly smooth bed, other dangers exist. Sometimes, deep down, a big “landslip” takes place, and a vast mass of débris slides to a lower level. If such a mass happensto descend upon a cable, the breakage of the latter is no unlikely event.

A hundred years ago, and less, Englishmen living and toiling in India reckoned themselves happy if, when they wrote “home,” a reply came by return of post in ten or twelve months.

Nowanswers to questions can be obtained in a few weeks, by post; and in cases of emergency, news of life or death, of safe arrival or recovery from illness, within a few hours.

Before the close of the Eighteenth Century, a British Embassy was sent to China, to interview the then Emperor of that always difficult country. The Ambassador and his suite were received with elaborate politeness, at the end of their tedious voyage. China was verbally polite then, as now. But an intimation followed, warning the visitors that, if they wished to escape unpleasant consequences, they had better take themselves off so soon as might be. Which they had to do, since no Army was at hand to back them up against a good many millions of yellow barbarians.

The story of all this reached England, and was given in theTimes, exactly one year after it happened.

Nowthe contrast! We know at breakfastone morning what has gone on, the previous afternoon, in China, in India, in Australia, in America, in Africa.

During the days of the Peninsular War, battles were fought, reverses took place, victories were won—and the news filtered slowly home by hand. Larger items of information arrived generally in the course of a few weeks; particulars as to individuals often not for months.

Now, not only does a check or a success on one day become known to the Empire at large on the day following; but even while a hard-fought battle is being carried on, we at home sometimes hear of it, and strain our mental vision, and watch in suspense for the ending.

What would our forefathers have thought of that historic day, when the beleaguered garrison of Ladysmith was fiercely assaulted, and we—seven thousand miles distant—knew what was being done; hearing that the heroic defenders were “hard-pressed,” and no more? Hours of agonised impatience were lived through; not only in England, but in many a far-off Colony beyond the Ocean, all waiting for the result. Not that the news might not have been sooner sent from South Africa. Delay was due to the cutting short of local sunshine, so that a heliographicmessage could not be flashed across a few miles of veldt.

This great advance has come about, not by improvements in the world’s shipping, though such improvements have not been small, but by means of the Electric Cable.

Not over the Ocean, butunderthe Ocean, messages are despatched with lightning speed, from man to man, in all parts of the civilised Earth.

Nor is this all. Quite lately another and still more marvellous means of communication has been discovered; a means which, if successfully followed out, as seems now probable, will tend still further to revolutionise the life of ships at sea.

By means of Wireless Telegraphy man can exchange thoughts with man, when the two are separated by many miles of distance. Watchers on a lonely lightship, far from land, can appeal in trouble to their friends on shore. The Admiral of a great war fleet can send his voiceless commands through space, unhampered by wire or cable, unhindered by fog or storm.

Not under the water, butthroughorabovethe water these messages journey; and in the course of time, this last new method of signalling may even largely supersede the use of submarinecables. Smaller and smaller grows our world, as greater and greater become the possibilities of intercourse between places and countries, the inhabitants of which, not very long ago, were cut off from one another by months of arduous travel. Distance is a matter of time, not of miles. England is nearer now to her Indian Dominions than she was two hundred years ago to Italy.

The enormous importance of the command of the sea to the inhabitants of Great Britain is, perhaps, more fully realised at the present time by Britons generally than ever before.

Other Nationalities are compact, homogeneous, self-contained, self-supporting. They have sometimes their Colonies over the water, more or less mere excrescences, additions hooked on for a purpose, separation from which would entail no vital loss to the ruling country. The word “Mother-country” would be a misnomer in such cases.

But with Great Britain her over-sea Colonies are an essential part of the “body-politic”—no more to be lopped off without injury and peril to the whole Empire, than a man’s limbs can be lopped off without suffering, and loss of blood, and danger to his life.

This great Empire of modern days is reckoned to contain “between eleven and twelve millions of square miles” of land; and “in round numbers four hundred millions” of subjects.

The four hundred millions are not, like the hundreds of millions of Chinese, all together in one part, all surrounded by a single containing border.

They are everywhere; in every clime; on every ocean; under tropical skies; around temperate seas; amid frozen plains. Each fraction of the Empire is divided from other fractions by the Ocean; and this makes needful, as an absolute essential to the integrity of the Empire, the command of leading Ocean-highways, by which the different portions are united.

From England to India; from England to Canada; from England to Australia; from England to South Africa; from England to Gibraltar and Malta and Egypt; from England to lesser Dependencies innumerable—always the “roadway” is over-sea; always the route is across the ocean-waters. Those ocean highways are thronged by the Empire’s ships; and under those seas thousands of miles of stout cable in all directions serve as do the “speaking tubes” in some large business establishment.

As surely as the existence of Great Britain depended in earlier days upon the strength of her Navy, so surely does the existence of the British Empire depend in these later days upon her command of the sea. Once let that vanish, and the Empire must fall to pieces.

A little Island in northern waters, clothed often in fogs, small in extent, crowded in population, without the means “aboard” of feeding its own people;—yet, from that same little Island are extended wide sheltering Wings around the whole globe, guarding her Dependencies, warning off interference on the part of other Powers. So that, in the infancy of many a young Daughter-land, and even in later more vigorous growth, the Children have been protected; and no man, no potentate, whatever his ambitions might be, has dared to lay a finger on them.

But the benefit is not all or only on one side.

As years go by, children repay their parents’ care. These young sheltered lands across the Ocean are growing strong. And in the day when the Mother-land found herself in difficulties, they joyously sprang one and all to her help, giving freely of their time, their money, their strength, their bravest and best, their very life-blood, in her service.

God-given, surely, is this mighty Empire into the hands of the Anglo-Saxon Race, to be used for God and for the good of Man, to be governed in the Name and in the Spirit of Christ.

It is a marvellous and unique sight. A world-wide Empire of modern days; divided by broad extents of Ocean; held together, not by fear, not by the sword, not by the iron heel of despotism, not even primarily by self-interest, but by Bonds of Love.

A congeries of free Nations, Mother and Children, united intoONE, by the noblest and purest of all ties; having had through over sixty years for its centre, for the controlling idea and motive of Empire, a Woman of tender heart and Royal spirit, a Queenly figure on Her Throne, to whom those hundreds of millions in many Lands were dear, since one and all they were to Her—“My People.” And though She has passed away, that thought has been taken up by Her Royal successor, one of whose first Kingly utterances was in the form of letters addressed—not only to “My People,” but to “My People beyond the Seas.”

Thus around the whole world, in every zone, through both hemispheres, about every ocean, the Union Jack never ceases to flutter in the breeze.

A Frenchman lately, speaking in public, described half humorously how, as he journeyed round our globe, at each halting-place, at each coaling-station, he found invariably “that bit of Rag,” so dear to the Briton.

And no wonder! for it is theRagwhich stands for Freedom.

In the lower Creation, under ocean-waters, we have seen how the fierce perpetual struggle for existence goes on; how, with scarcely more than one exception, that of the mother for her little one, each creature lives and thinks and fights for itself alone. But man is capable of better things. A man may forget self for his Country’s sake. He may lose sight of ease and gain, in thought for the poorer, the weaker, the darker tribes of Earth—under that protecting Flag.

Wherever it goes, north or south, east or west, there go also Freedom, Justice, and a liberal recognition of the rights of Man, even of the feeblest, even of the blackest-skinned. For the first time in the World’s History this grand and high ideal rules in the counsels of an Empire wide as the Ocean itself.

Transcriber's NotesThe following changes have been made to the text as printed.1. Illustrations and footnotes have been located in appropriate paragraph breaks.2. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.3. Where a word is used repeatedly in the same way, hyphenation has been made consistent, preferring the form most often used in the printed work, or failing that the more usual form in general use at the time of publication. No typographical change has been made within direct quotes from other works.4.Page 8: "Vasco de Gama" has been changed to "Vasco da Gama".

Transcriber's Notes

The following changes have been made to the text as printed.

1. Illustrations and footnotes have been located in appropriate paragraph breaks.

2. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

3. Where a word is used repeatedly in the same way, hyphenation has been made consistent, preferring the form most often used in the printed work, or failing that the more usual form in general use at the time of publication. No typographical change has been made within direct quotes from other works.

4.Page 8: "Vasco de Gama" has been changed to "Vasco da Gama".

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