rise are angry or benign, gorgeous or
sinister, we shall always have the same sky over our heads. Yet by a
kindly dispensation of Providence the human faculty of astonishment will
never lack food. What could be more surprising for instance, than the
calm invitation to Great Britain to discard the force and protection of
its Navy? It has been suggested, it has been proposed--I don't know
whether it has been pressed. Probably not much. For if the excursions
of audacious folly have no bounds that human eye can see, reason has the
habit of never straying very far away from its throne.

It is not the first time in history that excited voices have been heard
urging the warrior still panting from the fray to fling his tried weapons
on the altar of peace, for they would be needed no more! And such voices
have been, in undying hope or extreme weariness, listened to sometimes.
But not for long. After all every sort of shouting is a transitory
thing. It is the grim silence of facts that remains.

The British Merchant Service has been challenged in its supremacy before.
It will be challenged again. It may be even asked menacingly in the name
of some humanitarian doctrine or some empty ideal to step down
voluntarily from that place which it has managed to keep for so many
years. But I imagine that it will take more than words of brotherly love
or brotherly anger (which, as is well known, is the worst kind of anger)
to drive British seamen, armed or unarmed, from the seas. Firm in this
indestructible if not easily explained conviction, I can allow myself to
think placidly of that long, long future which I shall not see.

My confidence rests on the hearts of men who do not change, though they
may forget many things for a time and even forget to be themselves in a
moment of false enthusiasm. But of that I am not afraid. It will not be
for long. I know the men. Through the kindness of the Admiralty (which,
let me confess here in a white sheet, I repaid by the basest ingratitude)
I was permitted during the war to renew my contact with the British
seamen of the merchant service. It is to their generosity in recognising
me under the shore rust of twenty-five years as one of themselves that I
owe one of the deepest emotions of my life. Never for a moment did I
feel among them like an idle, wandering ghost from a distant past. They
talked to me seriously, openly, and with professional precision, of
facts, of events, of imp