Chapter 38

WELL DONE!

The day the Armistice was signed (the 11th of November, 1918) King George sent this Royal Message to the Navy:

Now that the last and most formidable of our enemies has acknowledged the triumph of the Allied arms on behalf of right and justice, I wish to express my praise and thankfulness to the officers, men, and women of the Royal Navy and Marines, with their comrades of the Fleet Auxiliaries and the Mercantile Marine, who, for more than four years have kept open the seas, protected our shores, and given us safety. Ever since that fateful Fourth of August, 1914, I have remained steadfast in my confidence that, whether fortune frowned or smiled, the Royal Navy would once more prove the sure shield of the British Empire in the hour of trial. Never in its history has the Royal Navy, with God's help, done greater things for us or better sustained its old glories and the chivalry of the sea. With full and grateful hearts the peoples of the British Empire salute the White, the Red, and the Blue Ensigns, and those who have given their lives for the Flag. I am proud to have served in the Navy. I am prouder still to be its Head upon this memorable Day.

GEORGE, R.I.

(The "women" to whom the King referred were the famous "Wrens," so called because the initials of the Women's Royal Naval Service--W.R.N.S.--can easily be turned into "Wrens." Everything that women could do they did; and did it well.)

(The White Ensign is the flag of the Navy: white, divided into four by the red St. George's Cross, and with the Union Jack in the upper inside quarter. The Red Ensign is for the Mercantile Marine. The Blue Ensign is for any Government service except the Navy. The Red and Blue Ensigns have the Union Jack in their upper inside quarters, but no St. George's Cross.)

The Mercantile Marine lost nearly fifteen thousand men killed; we ought to say murdered; for while a blockader can take ships and cargoes that try to run contraband (that is, whatever the blockader can rightfully proclaim to be forbidden) he must not kill the crews. The British merchant seamen fought; and the Germans said that was why they had to kill them. But it was the Germans who forced them to fight in self-defence. And that makes all the difference. When our enemies, Germans or others, can prove one case of such murder against the British Navy we shall punish the murderer ourselves. But they have not found that one case yet, while we have found close on fifteen thousand, not counting soldiers, passengers, women, or children. The Germans aimed at scaring off the sea those merchant seamen whom they could not kill, disable, or make prisoners. But not a man refused to go to sea again, even when his last ship had been torpedoed and his chums been killed. That is the first glory of the Mercantile Marine. But there are many more. And not the least is the pluck with which the British, who did most and lost most, started the race for oversea trade again, though at an enormous disadvantage compared with those who did least and gained most.

All kinds of British sea-power did magnificent work in the war, whether building ships, sailing them with passengers and cargoes, or fighting them. The Navy and Mercantile Marine gained eleven million tons during the war, exactly half each. But as the Mercantile Marine lost nine millions sunk, it ended three-and-a-half to the bad, a terrible handicap in the race with the shipping of countries which, like the United States have made stupendous fortunes by the war, besides gaining enormously in shipping and oversea trade. Norway, Japan, and the States gained most. The States came out of the war three and three-quarter million tons to the good, thus gaining over seven millions as compared with the British.

The case of the Navy was one of life or death for us and all our Allies; so the merchant fleet, fishing fleet, and shipbuilding yards had to let the Navy come first, no matter what the cost might be. But we must never forget that the Navy is only one-half of our British sea-power, that the Mercantile Marine is the other half, and that all kinds of British sea-power must work together or be lost. So we cannot separate one kind from another here; and we would not if we could.

Nor should we forget that British sea-power was itself only one of the many kinds of war-power put forth by Britain in the cause of freedom. Britain raised by far the largest force of volunteers ever raised by any country in any age or for any war--five million and forty-one thousand men for the Army alone. This takes no account of conscripts, or of naval, air force, or civilian Services; nor does it include one man belonging to any part of the British Empire overseas.

Then she forced into the ranks those that could but would not go as long as they got others to do their fighting for them. In the meantime her whole population, except those slackers every country had, had put its strenuous hand to war work of one kind or another. So, whether by sea or land or air, whether as warriors or as civilians, the people of Great Britain gave their united all to the noblest cause on earth. And, when the war ended, Great Britain had the biggest army as well as the biggest navy in the world--biggest not only in absolute numbers but also biggest in proportion to the whole number of men fit to bear arms. Nor was this in any way due to her having lost less than others; for she had the greatest total loss in killed and wounded of all the Allies--greatest on land, greatest by sea, and greatest in the air.

Besides all we have seen before, in following the more purely naval fortunes of the war, the Navy did priceless work in October 1914, when the huge German armies, beaten by the heroic French at the immortal Battle of the Marne, tried to take the North-East coast of France with the ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne. Held by Joffre further south, they found more than their match in the north, when French's little British army fought them to a standstill, while the Navy simply burnt them away from the coast by a perfect hurricane of fire.

Better still was the way the Navy finished off the submarine blockade. Of the 203 enemy submarines destroyed 151 were finished by the British Navy. The French, Americans, and Italians killed off the rest. All the 150 submarines surrendered came slinking into Harwich, the great British base for submarines. All the 170 submarines the Germans were building when the war was stopped were given up to the Allied Naval Commission headed by a British admiral and backed by a British fleet.

But even more wonderful than this was the oversea transport done by all kinds of British sea-power working together as one United Service. The British carried nearly half of all the imports into Italy and France. They repaired more than a thousand ships a month. They ferried nearly two-thirds of all the Americans that crossed the Atlantic. They took to the many different fronts more than half a million vehicles, from one-horse carts to the biggest locomotives; more than two million animals--horses, mules, and camels; and more than twenty-two millions of men. Add to this well over a couple of hundred million tons of oil, coal, and warlike stores; remember that this is by no means the whole story, and that it takes no account of the regular trade; and you may begin to understand what British sea-power meant in this war. In the mere transportation of armies alone it meant the same thing as taking the entire population of Canada, three times over, with all its baggage three times over, and with its very houses three times over, across thousands of miles of dangerous waters in the midst of the worst war ever known. And yet, out of the more than twenty-two millions of men, less than five thousand were killed on the way; and many of these were murdered in hospital ships marked with the sacred Red Cross. The chances of safety from murder and fair risks of war put together were nearly five thousand to one. The chances of safety from fair risks of war by themselves were nearly ten thousand to one.

No war, no navy, no sea-power since the world began, has any record to compare with this.

"Let us be backed with God and with the seas, Which He hath given for fence impregnable, And with their helps, only, defend ourselves: In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies." --_Shakespeare._ _King Henry VI, Part III, Act IV, Scene I._

POSTSCRIPT

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

Landsmen are many while seamen are few. So the world thinks more of armies than of fleets. Our enemies hate all British sea-power, while our friends never know the half of what it means. So friend and foe alike are apt to side against us by making the laws against blockading fleets very much harder than those against besieging armies.

All we can do is to stand firmly on our perfect rights and show the world the five good reasons why:--

1. The sea and land have equal rights. Blockading fleets are like besieging armies. So if besieging armies have the right to stop supplies from reaching the places they besiege, why should blockading fleets be told to let supplies go through?

2. All parts of our great Empire are joined together, not by land, but sea. So if we lose our rights of self-defence at sea we lose the very breath of life.

3. We claim no rights we will not share with others. When the American blockade of the South during the Civil War (1861-5) ruined the British cotton trade we never interfered, though we had by far the stronger navy.

4. We have never used the British Navy to bully weak nations out of their oversea possessions. Who could have stopped our taking the Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese possessions in Africa and Asia?

5. British sea-power has always been on the side of freedom; and every time a tyrant has tried to fight his way to world-dominion the Royal Navy has been the backbone of all the forces that have laid him low.

THE CANADIAN

I never saw the cliffs of snow, The Channel billows tipped with cream, The restless, eddying tides that flow About the Island of my dream. I never saw the English downs Upon an April day, The quiet, old Cathedral towns, The hedgerows white with may.

And still the name of England, Which tyrants laugh to scorn, Can thrill my soul. It is to me A very bugle-horn.

A thousand leagues from Plymouth shore, In broader lands I saw the light. I never heard the cannon roar, Or saw a mark of England's might; Save that my people lived in peace, Bronzed in the harvest sun, And thought that tyranny would cease, That battle-days were done.

And still the flag of England Streamed on a friendly breeze, And twice two hundred ships of war Went surging through the seas.

I heard Polonius declaim About the new, the golden age, When Force would be the mark of shame, And men would curb their murderous rage. "Beat out your swords to pruning-hooks," He shouted to the folk, But I--I read my history books, And marvelled as he spoke.

For it was glorious England, The mother of the Free, Who loosed that foolish tongue, but sent Her Admirals to sea.

And liberty and love were ours, Home, and a brood of lusty sons, The long, North sunlight and the flow'rs, How could we think about the guns, The searchlights on a wintry cloud, The seamen stern and bold, Since we were hurrying with the crowd To rake the hills for gold?

But it was glorious England Who scanned the threatening morn. To me the very name of her Is like a bugle-horn.

--_J. E. Middleton._