[_Face p. 88_
]
And this machine will not only create industrial wealth, but
agricultural prosperity, for it will enable the farmer to settle in
lands which to-day are but wilderness and waste. The old means will
continue, but will be pushed more and more into the beyond. The porter
will bring in his small load and so will the pack animal. These loads
will be collected and loaded on small roadless machines which will
convey them to the depôts from which the giant machines work backward
and forward to the railway, which will carry its hundreds of thousands
of tons down to the sea. We shall see less porters, less pack animals
and less wagons, but more railways and more ships, and these demand men
to work them. The waste lands will become fertile; townships will spring
up; industries will be created, and the energy of millions of men and
women will be profitably expended.
Now follows a curious sequent. If, commercially, we want to expand the
Empire, strategically we want to contract it. Our object is not to
maintain an immense army to pursue a course of foreign wars, but to
maintain law and order throughout the Empire and safeguard its
existence. The fewer men we employ the less will the army cost, and, be
it remembered, military expenditure during peace time is unremunerative.
To contract the Empire is not to abandon large tracts of country, this
is to cut the Gordian knot in place of unravelling it; but, instead, to
move over it quicker than we can to-day. What we want to contract is
time and not space, the time taken in moving over ground and
particularly over roadless country. The roadless vehicle will help us to
solve this problem. A battalion may march a hundred miles in a week, but
if carried in roadless vehicles this distance can be multiplied by
seven; and what is even more important, for long periods a line of
communication can be dispensed with, because the battalion can carry
supplies with it for several weeks.
[Illustration: