both in size and population.
It ended the Great War with the greatest of all the armies, the
greatest of all the navies, and the greatest of all the mercantile
marines. Better still, it not only did most towards keeping its
own--which is by far the oldest--freedom in the world, but it also did
most towards helping all its Allies to be free. There are many reasons
why we now enjoy these blessings. But there are three without which we
never could have had a single one. The first, of course, is sea-power.
But this itself depends on the second reason, which, in its turn,
depends upon the third. For we never could have won the greatest
sea-power unless we had bred the greatest race of seamen. And we never
could have bred the greatest race of seamen unless we ourselves had
been mostly bred from those hardy Norsemen who were both the terror and
the glory of the sea.

Many thousands of years ago, when the brown and yellow peoples of the
Far South-East were still groping their way about their steamy Asian
rivers and hot shores, a race of great, strong, fair-haired seamen was
growing in the North. This Nordic race is the one from which most
English-speaking people come, the one whose blood runs in the veins of
most first-class seamen to the present day, and the one whose
descendants have built up more oversea dominions, past and present,
than have been built by all the other races, put together, since the
world began.

To the sturdy Nordic stock belonged all who became famous as Vikings,
Berserkers, and Hardy Norsemen, as well as all the Anglo-Saxons, Jutes,
Danes, and Normans, from whom came most of the people that made the
British Empire and the United States. "Nordic" and "Norse" are,
therefore, much better, because much truer, words than "Anglo-Saxon",
which only names two of the five chief tribes from which most
English-speaking people come, and which is not nearly so true as
"Anglo-Norman" to describe the people, who, once formed in England,
spread over southern Scotland and parts of Ireland, and who have also
gone into every British, American, or foreign country that has ever
been connected with the sea.

When the early Nordics outgrew their first home beside the Baltic they
began sailing off to seek their fortune overseas. In course of time
they not only spread over the greater part of northern Europe but went
as far south as Italy and Spain, where the good effects of their
bracing blood have never been lost