le are simply annihilating. And the extermination of
whales, those magnificent leviathans of the mighty deep, would be a
loss from every point of view. Their own commercial value counts for a
good deal. Their value to the fisherman by driving bait inshore counts
for a good deal more. And their admirable place in nature counts for
most of all. Like elephants, lions, and deer, like birds of paradise
and eagles, the whales are among those noblest forms of life, without
whose glorious strength and beauty this world would be a poorer, tamer,
meaner place for proper men to live in.

{171}

CHAPTER X

ADMINISTRATION

Administration is used here for want of a better general term to cover
every form of management that is done ashore, as well as every form of
what might be called, by analogy with fleets and armies, non-combatant
work afloat. It falls into two natural divisions: the first includes
all private management, the second all that concerns the government.
Here, even more than in the other chapters, we are face to face with
such complex and enormous interests that we can only take the merest
glance at what those interests principally are.

The privately managed interests have both their business and their
philanthropic sides. Let us take the philanthropic first. Seamen's
Institutes have grown from very small beginnings, and are now to be
found in every port where English-speaking seamen congregate. They
began when, as the saying was, the sailor {172} earnt his money like a
horse and spent it like an ass. They flourish when the sailor is much
better able to look after himself. But their help is needed still; and
what they have done in the past has not been the least among the
influences which have made the common lot of the seaman so very much
better than it was. Another excellent influence is that of the Royal
National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. This mission sends its
missioners afloat in its own steamers to tend the sick and bring some
of the amenities of shore life within the reach of those afloat.
Religion is among its influences, but only in an unsectarian way. Its
work in Canadian waters is directed by two able and self-sacrificing
men: Dr Grenfell, whose base is at St Anthony's in North-East
Newfoundland, and whose beat goes straight down north along the
Newfoundland Labrador, which faces the Atlantic; and Dr Hare, whose
base is Harrington, in the centre of the Canadian Labrador, which