nce and
a French fleet visited England. It was a thrilling sight to see that
noble Frenchman, Admiral Caillard, whose example was followed by all
his officers, stand up in his carriage to salute the Nelson statue in
Trafalgar Square.

In 1908, when Canada was celebrating the Tercentenary of a life that
could never have begun without Drake or been saved without Nelson, the
French and British Prime Ministers (Clemenceau and Campbell-Bannerman)
were talking things over in Paris. The result was that the British
left the Mediterranean mainly in charge of the French Navy, while the
French left the Channel mostly and the North Sea entirely in charge of
the British. There was no treaty then or at any other time. Each
Government left its own Parliament, and therefore its own People, whose
servant it was, to decide freely when the time came. But the men at
the head of the French and British fleets and armies arranged, year by
year, what they would do when they got the word _GO_! At the same time
(six years before the war) that the Prime Ministers were in conference
in Paris Lord Haldane, then Secretary of State for War, was warning
Lord French in London that he would be expected to command the British
army against the Germans in France, and that he had better begin to
study the problem at once.

A great deal of sickening nonsense has been talked about our having
been so "righteous" because so "unprepared." We were not prepared to
_attack_ anybody; and quite rightly too; though we need not get
self-righteous over it. But our great Mother Country's Navy was most
certainly and most rightly prepared to _defend_ the Empire and its
allies against the attack that was bound to come. If France and Great
Britain had not been well enough prepared for self-defence, then the
Germans must have won; and wrong would have triumphed over right all
over the world. There is only one answer to all this "Pacifistic"
stuff-and-nonsense--if you will not fight on the side of right, then
you help those who fight on the side of wrong; and if you see your
enemy preparing to attack you wrongfully, and you do not prepare to
defend yourself, then you are a fool as well as a knave.

All the great experts in statesmanship and war saw the clash coming;
and saw that it was sure to come, because the German war party could
force it on the moment they were ready. Moreover, it was known that
the men of this war party would have forced it on at once if a