stly out of all
proportion to the results obtained. Indeed, it failed completely
to effect what had been expected of it. In the great days of old
our fleet, after all, was manned, not by impressed men, but by
volunteers. It was largely due to that that we became masters
of the sea.

VI

PROJECTED INVASIONS OF THE BRITISH ISLES[62]

[Footnote 62: Written in 1900. (_The_Times_.)]

The practice to which we have become accustomed of late, of
publishing original documents relating to naval and military
history, has been amply justified by the results. These meet
the requirements of two classes of readers. The publications
satisfy, or at any rate go far towards satisfying, the wishes
of those who want to be entertained, and also of those whose
higher motive is a desire to discover the truth about notable
historical occurrences. Putting the public in possession of the
materials, previously hidden in more or less inaccessible
muniment-rooms and record offices, with which the narratives of
professed historians have been constructed, has had advantages
likely to become more and more apparent as time goes on. It acts
as a check upon the imaginative tendencies which even eminent
writers have not always been able, by themselves, to keep under
proper control. The certainty, nay the mere probability, that
you will be confronted with the witnesses on whose evidence you
profess to have relied--the 'sources' from which your story is
derived--will suggest the necessity of sobriety of statement and
the advisability of subordinating rhetoric to veracity. Had the
contemporary documents been available for an immediate appeal to
them by the reading public, we should long ago have rid ourselves
of some dangerous superstitions. We should have abandoned our
belief in the fictions that the Armada of 1588 was defeated by the
weather, and that the great Herbert of Torrington was a lubber,
a traitor, and a coward. It is not easy to calculate the benefit
that we should have secured, had the presentation of some important
events in the history of our national defence been as accurate as
it was effective. Enormous sums of money have been wasted in trying
to make our defensive arrangements square with a conception of
history based upon misunderstanding or misinterpretation of facts.
Pecuniary extravagance is bad enough; but there is a greater evil
still. We have been taught to cherish, and we have been reluctant
to abandon, a false standa