had failed to answer the call. Noticed or
unnoticed, ignored or commanded, they have answered invariably the call
to do their work, the very conditions of which made them what they are.
They have always served the nation's needs through their own invariable
fidelity to the demands of their special life; but with the development
and complexity of material civilisation they grew less prominent to the
nation's eye among all the vast schemes of national industry. Never was
the need greater and the call to the services more urgent than to-day.
And those inconspicuous workers on whose qualities depends so much of the
national welfare have answered it without dismay, facing risk without
glory, in the perfect faithfulness to that tradition which the speech of
the statesman denies to them at the very moment when he thinks fit to
praise their courage . . . and mention his surprise!

The hour of opportunity has struck--not for the first time--for the
Merchant Service; and if I associate myself with all my heart in the
admiration and the praise which is the greatest reward of brave men I
must be excused from joining in any sentiment of surprise. It is perhaps
because I have not been born to the inheritance of that tradition, which
has yet fashioned the fundamental part of my character in my young days,
that I am so consciously aware of it and venture to vindicate its
existence in this outspoken manner.

Merchant seamen have always been what they are now, from their earliest
days, before the Royal Navy had been fashioned out of the material they
furnished for the hands of kings and statesmen. Their work has made
them, as work undertaken with single-minded devotion makes men, giving to
their achievements that vitality and continuity in which their souls are
expressed, tempered and matured through the succeeding generations. In
its simplest definition the work of merchant seamen has been to take
ships entrusted to their care from port to port across the seas; and,
from the highest to the lowest, to watch and labour with devotion for the
safety of the property and the lives committed to their skill and
fortitude through the hazards of innumerable voyages.

That was always the clear task, the single aim, the simple ideal, the
only problem for an unselfish solution. The terms of it have changed
with the years, its risks have worn different aspects from time to time.
There are no longer any unexplored seas. Human ingenuity has dev