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      recognised that democracy and free institutions begin to develop 
      from below under conditions of peace and security and tend to 
      decline where war or revolution are constant. An important by-product 
      of the control of the seas by Great Britain in the past has been 
      the growth of freedom and democracy behind the shield of British 
      sea power. Not only has Great Britain steadily become more democratic 
      in the last century, but Canada, Australia, South Africa and 
      New Oealand have become in effect independent nations, and self-government 
      has been rapidly developed recently in India, Ceylon, Burma and 
      among all peoples of the British Commonwealth who are ready for 
      it. This is due to no special virtue among the British people. 
      It is partly due to the fact that Great Britain has long been 
      a satisfied and prosperous power. It is far more due to the fact 
      that the stable peace and security created by the control of 
      the seas by an increasingly liberal Britain made possible an 
      uninterrupted pressure for freedom and self-government from below 
      both in Great Britain itself and in all its possessions. The 
      control of the seas by Great Britain has also been the first 
      line of defence behind which North and South America have enjoyed 
      the unusual advantage of being able to develop along their own 
      lines without having to engage in international struggles and 
      war for more than a century before 1914. The virtue of the system 
      is seen in the fact that the nineteenth century saw the greatest 
      expansion of freedom all over the non-European and non-Asiatic 
      world ever recorded and that during that period there was no 
      world war, until British sea-power was once more challenged in 
      1914.
 
      
 
 
It is this system which is now under attack. The basis of 
      the British control of the seas was twofold:
 
      
 
 
(a) The policy of the balance of power in Europe, which sought 
      to prevent any authoritarian or militarist power from obtaining 
      control over