rd work
of men are born the sympathetic consciousness of a common destiny, the
fidelity to right practice which makes great craftsmen, the sense of
right conduct which we may call honour, the devotion to our calling and
the idealism which is not a misty, winged angel without eyes, but a
divine figure of terrestrial aspect with a clear glance and with its feet
resting firmly on the earth on which it was born.

And work will overcome all evil, except ignorance, which is the condition
of humanity and, like the ambient air, fills the space between the
various sorts and conditions of men, which breeds hatred, fear, and
contempt between the masses of mankind, and puts on men's lips, on their
innocent lips, words that are thoughtless and vain.

Thoughtless, for instance, were the words that (in all innocence, I
believe) came on the lips of a prominent statesman making in the House of
Commons an eulogistic reference to the British Merchant Service. In this
name I include men of diverse status and origin, who live on and by the
sea, by it exclusively, outside all professional pretensions and social
formulas, men for whom not only their daily bread but their collective
character, their personal achievement and their individual merit come
from the sea. Those words of the statesman were meant kindly; but, after
all, this is not a complete excuse. Rightly or wrongly, we expect from a
man of national importance a larger and at the same time a more
scrupulous precision of speech, for it is possible that it may go echoing
down the ages. His words were:

"It is right when thinking of the Navy not to forget the men of the
Merchant Service, who have shown--and it is more surprising because they
have had no traditions towards it--courage as great," etc., etc.

And then he went on talking of the execution of Captain Fryatt, an event
of undying memory, but less connected with the permanent, unchangeable
conditions of sea service than with the wrong view German minds delight
in taking of Englishmen's psychology. The enemy, he said, meant by this
atrocity to frighten our sailors away from the sea.

"What has happened?" he goes on to ask. "Never at any time in peace have
sailors stayed so short a time ashore or shown such a readiness to step
again into a ship."

Which means, in other words, that they answered to the call. I should
like to know at what time of history the English Merchant Service, the
great body of merchant seamen,