the Chinese and Indian seas they came, from the Pacific and Atlantic
trade routes, from whaling, it might be, or the Newfoundland fishing
grounds or the Dogger Bank--three thousand officers and some two
hundred thousand men--to supply the Grand Fleet, to patrol the
waterways, to drag for the German mines, to carry the armies of the
Alliance, and incidentally, to show the world, what it has perhaps
forgotten, that it is not by virtue of their fighting navy that the
British are a maritime people, but by virtue of an instinct amounting
to genius, rooted in a very ancient and unmatched experience of
shipping and the sea. The Grand Fleet is only the child of this
service which was already old before the word 'Admiralty' was first
employed, which made its own voyages and fought its own battles since
Columbus discovered America, and before even that considerable event.
These travel-worn ships formed the solid bridge across which flowed in
unbroken files the men and supplies to the British and the Allied
fronts.

"Picture a great railroad which has for its main line a track four or
five thousand miles in length, curving from Archangel in Russia to
Alexandria in Egypt, a track which touches on its way the coasts of
Norway, of the British Isles, of France, of Portugal, of Spain, of
Italy, of Greece. Picture from this immense arc of communication
branch lines longer still, diverging to America, to Africa, to India,
knitting the ports of the world together in one vast railway system.
That railroad system, with its engines and rolling stock, its stations
and junctions, its fuel stores and offices, over which run daily and
nightly the wagon loads, of food, munitions, stores for a dozen
countries at war with the Central Powers, is a railroad of British
ships. To dislocate, to paralyze it, Germany would willingly give a
thousand millions, for the scales would then descend in her favor and
victory indubitably be hers. For consider the consequences of
interruption in that stream of traffic. Britain herself on the brink
of starvation, her troops in France, in Egypt, in Salonica, cut off
without food, without ammunition, unable to return to their homes. But
for this fleet that bridges the seas, Britain could not send or use a
single soldier anywhere save in defense of her own shores. India,
Australia, Canada, all her dependencies would be cut off from the
Mother Country, the bonds of empire immediately dissolved. Some little
impo