Any one who reads the history of these three great wars will feel a sense of illusion, as if he were reading the history of to-day.  The points of resemblance in all four wars are so many and so great that it seems as if the four wars were all one war, repeated every century.  The cause of the war is always an ambitious ruler who covets supremacy on the European Continent.  England is always opposed to him—­inevitably and instinctively.  It took the Germans twenty years to prepare their people for this War.  It took us two days to prepare ours.  Our instinct is quick and sound; for the resources and wealth of the Continent, if once they were controlled by a single autocratic power, would make it impossible for England to follow her fortunes upon the sea.  But we never stand quite alone.  The smaller peoples of the Continent, who desire self-government, or have achieved it, always give the conqueror trouble, and rebel against him or resist him.  England always sends help to them, the help of an expeditionary force, or, failing that, the help of irregular volunteers.  Sir Philip Sidney dies at Zutphen; Sir John Moore at Corunna.  There is always desperate fighting in the Low Countries; and the names of Mons, Liege, Namur, and Lille recur again and again.  England always succeeds in maintaining herself, though not without some reverses, on the sea.  In the end the power of the master of legions, Philip, Louis, Napoleon, and shall we say William, crumbles and melts; his ambitions are too costly to endure, his people chafe under his lash, and his kingdom falls into insignificance or is transformed by internal revolution.

In all these wars there is one other resemblance which it is good to remember to-day.  The position of England, at one time or another in the course of the war, always seems desperate.  When Philip of Spain invaded England with the greatest navy of the world, he was met on the seas by a fleet made up chiefly of volunteers.  When Louis overshadowed Europe and threatened England, our king was in his pay and had made a secret treaty with him; our statesmen, moreover, had destroyed our alliance with the maritime powers of Sweden and Holland, we had war with the Dutch, and our fleet was beaten by them.  During the war against Napoleon we were in an even worse plight; the plausible political doctrines of the Revolution found many sympathizers in this country; our sailors mutinied at the Nore; Ireland was aflame with discontent; and we were involved in the Mahratta War in India, not to mention the naval war with America.  Even after Trafalgar, our European allies failed us, Napoleon disposed of Austria and Prussia, and concluded a separate treaty with Russia.  It was then that Wordsworth wrote—­

  ’’Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
  That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
  That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
  That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low. 
  O dastard whom such foretaste doth not cheer! 
  We shall exult, if they who rule the land
  Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
  Wise, upright, valiant; not a servile band,
  Who are to judge of dangers which they fear,
  And honour which they do not understand.’