stive
consciousness of disappointment and apprehension.

For the power, the independence, the destinies of the Empire are
interwoven with our command of the sea. On our merchant tonnage depend
our economic life, our army and navy, everything we have and are and
hope to be. That destroyed or paralysed, nothing remains but a memory.
And the Germans are working hard and not unsuccessfully to cripple it.
During the week ending April 13, 85,000 tons of British and neutral
shipping were destroyed. Since the beginning of the submarine blockade
over 3,000,000 tons have been sent to the bottom of the sea. On an
average 50,000 tons a week are being torpedoed or mined, and our
losses tend to augment rather than diminish. Nor is that all. Not only
is our merchant tonnage being whittled down below the minimum needed
for our strict requirements, but we are also being hindered from
utilizing the transports available. And herein lies a danger the full
significance of which has not yet received proper attention. Shortage
of labour is pleaded as the reason why effective measures have not
been adopted to fill the gaps made by the enemy submarines. And labour
is inadequate because the Government eschewes industrial as well as
military compulsion. It possesses the power, but shrinks from wielding
it. To my thinking, this is one of the symptoms of that madness with
which the gods strike a nation before destroying it.

And the longer this process of--shall we call it mutual?--exhaustion
goes on, the more important grow the neutral States and the louder
sound their voices. They are like Jeshurun, who waxed fat and kicked.
Without special aptitudes for arithmetic one may calculate, with a
rough approach to accuracy, the time when the process of mutual
exhaustion will enable the neutrals to exert an absurdly
disproportionate and possibly dangerous influence over the
belligerents. That is a calculation which those optimists would do
well to make who tell us that all is well because "time is on our
side."

It is still open to us to utilize our superior resources, realize our
latent strength, and ward off the dangers that beset us. But the first
advance towards the goal must be to face the facts, behold things and
persons as they are, and apply our new-found knowledge to the work of
self-rescue. Our conception of the nature of the contest in which we
are engaged must be recast. Our demands on our national leaders--not
those now in power who onl