would be imperilled, and on those pounds she insisted that it was a national duty with her to safeguard her interests.
There can be no shadow of doubt that had a strong Government been in power in England, these pretensions of France would have been settled diplomatically. But the Liberals had seldom distinguished themselves in foreign policy, and since the Radicals had been in the ascendancy that policy had been the ridicule of the world. Even in the face of the threatened danger of a rupture with her Continental neighbour, the men at the head of English affairs continued to dally and shuffle, until the relations between the two countries had become exceedingly strained. Statements and warnings were constantly being made in the Conservative papers that a powerful French fleet was assembling in the harbours of Cherbourg and Brest, and that in the French naval dockyards the utmost activity prevailed. But these warnings were disregarded, and the Ministerial organs pronounced them "the nightmare fears of Jingo alarmists." But it was nevertheless a fact that France was secretly and silently making great preparations. For years she had been adding to her naval strength, and thoughtful men had foretold the day when she would contest with England the supremacy of the seas. But Radical statesmen in England had continued to gull the people into a belief that England's power was absolute and could not be broken. A few years previously fears had been expressed that the British navy was not as powerful as it ought to be, and when the Conservatives came into power they laid down several first-class ships, and distributed orders amongst private firms for a number of unarmoured cruisers, of an exceptional rate of speed, all of which were to be heavily armed. The work was pushed forward with great rapidity during the Conservative Administration; but, as soon as ever the Liberals got the reins again, they allowed the work to flag, and discharged immense numbers of men from the Government dockyards so as to reduce the estimates in their Budget. Dust was thus thrown into the eyes of the English people, who were content to live on in the fool's paradise which Democrats and Radicals had created for them.
