of our army for home defence. The duty of a fleet in time of war is to go to sea and destroy the enemy's ships, and while it is absent on this mission an opportunity for invasion may occur, the success of which will wholly depend upon the force the invader will meet on landing.
The Japanese recently landed in Manchuria in spite of Russia's superior naval strength; but because it was the case of an island invading a continent, we do not apply the lesson to ourselves, and are content to believe that a continent cannot invade an island.
It is obvious to the military student that no invasion will be attempted unless its success is reasonably certain, and the presence of four divisions of regular troops at home renders such an enterprise extremely difficult, if not impossible, without permanent command of the sea. But these four divisions are not the Home Defence Force, and form that part of our Expeditionary Army for service outside the United Kingdom. We may, therefore, rest assured that as long as we retain command of the sea, no invasion can take place until we are involved in an over-seas war which requires a more or less large portion of our Expeditionary Force—an event which may happen almost any decade.
It will be safe, therefore, to assume that in the event of an invasion we shall have to rely on our Territorial Army to meet the enemy, and it will be doing this force no injustice to
