Owing in all probability to the happy fact in History that England has
not been invaded and over-run by a foreign army since the time of
William the Conqueror--an episode which had in the end an excellent
influence on the national life--she has never taken the military art
seriously. She alone, thanks to the protection of Providence, has never
been compelled to fight on her own fields for her existence as a nation;
she alone knows nothing even by tradition handed down from distant
generations of the appearance of an alien soldier on her shores.[10]
Some of her wars, as for example the successful struggle by which the
Napoleonic domination was broken up, have been fought for the purpose of
safe-guarding her independence, but they were not popular with the
people at large, whose short sight did not permit them to see that a
defensive war may have to be fought beyond the seas; and they had little
or no effect in evoking a patriotic military spirit. Napoleon's gibe
that the English were a nation of shopkeepers was not unasked for, and
is still seasonable.

On the other hand there are hundreds of thousands of persons on the
Continent of Europe who have seen, or who are the near descendants of
those who have seen, their fatherland ravaged; their homes destroyed;
their relations, friends, and neighbours slaughtered in the defence; the
tree of the national life maimed; and the full cup of the horrors of war
drained to its dregs.

To them the prospect of an invasion is not a remote contingency to be
considered and provided for at leisure after academical discussion, but
a real and instant danger from which only universal service, to which
fortunately for themselves they submit without much demur, as it could
not be enforced upon a reluctant community, can preserve them.