o long, in short, as
the militia was the only army, and private adventurers or trading
companies created and controlled the only navy. War, colonization,
conquest, traffic, formed a joint business and a private speculation. If
there were danger that England, yielding to purely mercantile habits of
thought and action, might degenerate from the more martial standard to
which she had been accustomed, there might be virtue in that Netherland
enterprise, which was now to call forth all her energies. The Provinces
would be a seminary for English soldiers.

"There can be no doubt of our driving the enemy out of the country
through famine and excessive charges," said the plain-spoken English
soldier already quoted, who came out with Leicester, "if every one of us
will put our minds to go forward without making a miserable gain by the
wars. A man may see, by this little progress journey, what this long
peace hath wrought in us. We are weary of the war before we come where it
groweth, such a danger hath this long peace brought us into. This is, and
will be, in my opinion, a most fit school and nursery to nourish soldiers
to be able to keep and defend our country hereafter, if men will follow
it."

Wilford was vehement in denouncing the mercantile tendencies of his
countrymen, and returned frequently to that point in his communications
with Walsingham and other statesmen. "God hath stirred up this action,"
he repeated again, "to be a school to breed up soldiers to defend the
freedom of England, which through these long times of peace and quietness
is brought into a most dangerous estate, if it should be attempted. Our
delicacy is such that we are already weary, yet this journey is naught in
respect to the misery and hardship that soldiers must and do endure."

He was right in his estimate of the effect likely to be produced by the
war upon the military habits of Englishmen; for there can be no doubt
that the organization and discipline of English troops was in anything
but a satisfactory state at that period. There was certainly vast room
for improvement. Nevertheless he was wrong in his views of the leading
tendencies of his age. Holland and England, self-helping, self-moving,
were already inaugurating a new era in the history of the world. The
spirit of commercial maritime enterprise--then expanding rapidly into
large proportions--was to be matched against the religious and knightly
enthusiasm which had accomplished such wonde