principle, regulating our naval and military dispositions, had been that those forces would not be wanted to contend against highly trained troops or first-class modern navies assembled in European waters. Our ships, now concentrated, were scattered over the globe, while our army was organised confessedly for not much more than frontier fighting and "little wars." Or rather, there had hitherto been a complete lack of any agreement at all upon broad principles. Through the dim haze of military chaos might be discerned, indeed, three lines—the first, a professional force; the second, a semi-professional force, the militia; and the third, a purely voluntary organisation. But, as the War minister himself said in 1907, "our first line is full of gaps; our second line is decadent; and the third is totally disorganised." Up till now, in regard to overseas action, the mountain of our military reorganisation has brought forth what some esteem a mouse, an "expeditionary force," fitted presumably to manœuvre by the side of some big rat of a European ally. But, as Lord Haldane himself has often stated, "we are only at the beginning of the work."
The fourth line of defence is action in support of the Concert of Europe. This is a legacy from the later years of Lord Salisbury. He himself, he said, preferred to call it the Federation of Europe. On several occasions he defined its main purpose as the prevention of European war. He realised that it was as yet of only intermittent
