England would be weakened, and to some extent impoverished by a war ending with such results; but her great asset, her possession beyond price would still be hers--her geographical position.

Deprive her to-day, say of the Gold Coast, the Niger, Gibraltar, even of Egypt, impose a heavy indemnity, and while Germany would barely have recouped herself for the out-of-pocket losses of the war, England in fact would have lost nothing, and ten years hence the Teuton would look out again upon the same prospect, a Europe still dominated beyond the seas by the Western islanders.
The work would have to be done all over again.

A second Punic war would have to be fought with this disadvantage--that the Atlantic Sicily would be held and used still against the Northern Rome, by the Atlantic Carthage.
A victorious Germany, in addition to such terms as she may find it well to impose in her own immediate financial or territorial interests, must so draft her peace conditions as to preclude her great antagonist from ever again seriously imperilling the freedom of the seas.

I know of no way save one to make sure the open seas.

Ireland, in the name of Europe, and in the exercise of European right to free the seas from the over-lordship of one European island, must be resolutely withdrawn from British custody.