rness
Go up against our path:
Ere yet we loose the legions--
Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, aid!

* * * *

E'en now their vanguard gathers,
E'en now we face the fray--
As Thou didst help our fathers,
Help Thou our host to-day!
Fulfilled of signs and wonders,
In life, in death made clear--
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, hear!
--_Rudyard Kipling_.

CHAPTER XXIV

WAR

(1914-1915)

No one who has had a look behind the scenes will ever forget the three
War Wednesdays of 1914, the 22nd and 29th of July and the 5th of
August; for during that dire fortnight the fate of the whole world hung
trembling in the scales of life and death.

On the first the King reviewed the Grand Fleet, when twenty-two miles
of fighting ships steamed by, all ready for instant battle with the
High Sea Fleet of Germany: ready not only for battles _on_ the water
but _under_ the water and _over_ the water as well. No king, even of
sea-girt Britain, was ever so good a judge of what a fleet should be as
was King George on that momentous day; for, till the death of his elder
brother made him Heir to the Throne, he had spent the whole of his keen
young life as a naval officer who did his work so well that he must
have risen to a place among the best of British Admirals. Just as it
was a great thing to have had King Edward the Wise to make (as he alone
could make) the _Entente Cordiale_ with France, so it was a great thing
to have had King George the Sailor standing by the helm of the ship of
state when the fated war had come. British to the backbone, knowing
the Empire overseas as no other king had known it, George V was born to
distrust the Germans, being the son of the Danish Princess Alexandra,
who had seen all the country round the Kiel Canal torn from the Crown
of Denmark within a year of her marriage to King Edward. The Kaiser's
lying letter to Lord Tweedmouth in 1908 was the last straw that broke
King George's little patience with the German plotters headed by Grand
Admiral von Tirpitz. "What," he exclaimed, "would the Kaiser say, if
the King wrote a letter like that to Tirpitz?"

The chief kinds of fighting craft in the Grand Fleet can be told off on
the fingers of one hand. First, the Battleships and Battle Cruisers.
These are to our own fleets what ships-of-the-line-of-battle were to
Nelson's, th