y employed, a calculated attempt to
strengthen the _materiel_ of the navy at the cost of Englishmen's fears.
Now let me define my feeling towards the Navy League. As an ordinary
British citizen, I must heartily approve its aim of strengthening the navy
and keeping it efficient. As an ordinary reasonable man, I must admit
that its efforts, if rightly directed, may be of great national service.
But language such as I have quoted must (so far as it is not merely
contemptible) be merely demoralising, and anyone who works on the fears of
a nation--and especially of a nation which declines conscription and its
one undoubted advantage of teaching men what war means--does a harm which
is none the less wicked for being incalculable. These Navy Leaguers cry
incessantly for more _material_ strength. They tell us that in material
strength we should at least be equal to any two other countries.
A few months pass, and then, their appetite growing with the terror it
feeds upon, they insist that we must be equal to any three other
countries. Also "it does not appear," they sagely remark, "that Nelson
and his contemporaries left any record as to what the proportion of the
blockading should bear (_sic_) to one blockaded,"--a curious omission of
Nelson's, to be sure! He may perhaps have held that it depended on the
quality of the antagonists.

To this a few ordinary stupid Britons like myself have always answered
that no amount of _materiel_ can ever replace _morale_; and that all such
panic-making is a mischievous attempt to lower the breed, and the more
mischievous because its mischief may for a while be imperceptible.
We can see our warships growing: we cannot see the stamina decaying; yet
it is our stamina on which we must rely finally in the fatal hour of
trial. We said this, and we were laughed at; insulted as unpatriotic--a
word of which one may say in kindness that it would not so readily leap to
the lips of professional patriots if they were able to understand what it
means and, by consequence, how much it hurts.

Yes, and behold, along comes Admiral Togo, and at one stroke proves that
we were simply, absolutely and henceforward incontestably right!
What were our little three-power experts doing on the morrow of Togo's
victory? They are making irrelevant noises in the halfpenny press,
explaining how Admiral Togo did it with an inferior force, and in a
fashion that belies all their axioms. But I turn to _The Times_ and I