centre of the world On the other hand, the distress in England after 1797 arose mainly from the depreciation of the currency, so that in 1812 it was 21 per cent. below par value.
To think in battleships it is necessary to show the cost of purely passive defence in this country, and its equivalent in battleships of the latest type estimated to cost £1,800,000. For this purpose I use an official return, giving the net army estimates of 1903-1904 as £28,995,000. Of this sum £14,540,000 was devoted to the field army available for general service, including troops in South Africa and Egypt, and all regular units at home, except those in depots. This left for immobile or sedentary defence £14,455,000. To obtain the equivalent in Dreadnoughts, with twice the armament of former battleships, I submit the following table to criticism as the annual cost of such a vessel:
| £ | |
| Interest on first cost at 3 per cent. | 54,000 |
| Depreciation for a life of twenty-five years | 70,000 |
| Cost of crew | 45,000 |
| Victualling | 16,000 |
| Coal | 25,000 |
| Stores of all kinds and repairs | 20,000 |
| Annual cost of one Dreadnought in full commission | 230,000 |
Dividing this total into the sum annually devoted to the passive defence, which can do nothing towards the winning of wars, we find that in 1908-1904 we were spending the equivalent of sixty-three Dreadnoughts, or of a number of fleets in full commission, probably over three times as formidable as the ones we now rely on to win command of the sea. This is not only, as the Times has rightly called it, 'the ruinous system of double insurance, but it is insurance in the wrong office. We have by no means, however, laid bare the full extent of the evil. A very large part of the £84,000,000 being spent on naval works out of loans, and of the £18,000,000 on military works, is for purely sedentary
