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      the whole European continent and so threatening the safety of 
      Great Britain itself.
 
      
 
 
(b) The maintenance of a superior navy to prevent the fleets 
      of Europe from entering the Atlantic partly by controlling the 
      exits from Europe by the North Sea and the English Channel, by 
      Gibraltar and Suez, and partly by maintaining overseas bases 
      at Gibraltar, Cape Town, the Falkland Islands, Suez, Aden, Ceylon, 
      Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia, which enabled the British 
      fleet to mobilise effective superiority to any hostile fleet 
      which might attempt to appear on the high seas, anywhere. This 
      system is challenged by three facts: -
 
      
 
 
(1) By the now unchallenged superiority of Germany in Central 
      Europe, though not yet extended over the whole of Europe.
 
      
 
 
(2) By the rise of totalitarian Japan, which has driven Great 
      Britain out of the Far East and back to Singapore.
 
      
 
 
(3) By the rise of air power, which renders Great Britain 
      itself vulnerable to direct attack.
 
      
 
 
Nevertheless, because the United States, for reasons of her 
      own defence, holds impregnably Alaska, Hawaii and Panama, the 
      control of the high seas and of the bases necessary to that control 
      is still in democratic hands, and will continue to be so so long 
      as the Maginot line holds, as Great Britain controls the North 
      Sea and the English Channel, as France and Great Britain control 
      the Mediterranean and its exits, as Singapore is controlled by 
      Great Britain and Hawaii by the United States.
 
      
 
 
This system of sea power, behind which free institutions still 
      flourish over about half the globe, while they have been overthrown 
      everywhere else, was vindicated in 1918, but only because the 
      United States