holidaying on the island were generally small and uninspiring. Bermudian business and political leaders realised that a large, first-rate hotel was required. The development of the hotel hinged on American investment, however. Foreigners were not, then, permitted to buy land or businesses in Bermuda, lest their governments use protecting those interests as a pretext for invasion. Bermuda was, at the time, considered by the UK government more as a naval and military base than as a colony (it housed the chief Royal Navy base in the western North Atlantic, and the attendant large military garrison to guard it). The military personnel made up a quarter of the population, and defence spending, not agriculture or tourism, was the central leg of the Bermudian economy. Many wealthy American visitors actually brought their daughters to holiday on the island specifically in hopes of marrying them to young aristocratic military or naval officers (this put them in competition with local women, but the Princess sponsored dances and other social gatherings to which the officers of the garrison were invited to mingle with guests). The UK Government had been imploring the Bermuda Government for decades to raise its own part-time military units to allow the withdrawal of some of the regular army detachments. This was due to the immense costs of the garrisons in Bermuda and elsewhere, at a time when the Army was attempting to re-organise itself to be more effective. As the Army's budget was not being increased, this could only be achieved by redisposition of existing units. The Bermudian Government had long ignored these pleas, but needed the approval of the UK Government to allow US investment in the Princess, as well as to widen the channel into St. George's (necessary to allow that port to continue to thrive in an age where ships had grown too large to safely use the existing channel, but which it was argued would make an invader's task easier). The Secretary of State for War insisted he could not approve either project while Bermuda contributed nothing to her own defence. Ultimately, the Bermuda Government would not honour its end of the agreement until a decade after the Princess Hotel was opened. Two 1892 Acts of the Bermudian Parliament authorised the creation in 1894 and 1895 of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps and the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Development and marketing of The Princess Harley Trott, a leading