SMALL CRAFT
When Drake sailed out from Devon to break King Philip's pride,
He had great ships at his bidding and little ones beside;
Revenge was there, and Lion, and others known to fame,
And likewise he had small craft, which hadn't any name.
Small craft—small craft, to harry and to flout 'em!
Small craft—small craft, you cannot do without 'em!
Their deeds are unrecorded, their names are never seen,
But we know that there were small craft, because there must have been.
When Nelson was blockading for three long years and more,
With many a bluff first-rater and oaken seventy-four
To share the fun and fighting, the good chance and the bad,
Oh, he had also small craft, because he must have had.
Upon the skirts of battle, from Sluys to Trafalgar,
We know that there were small craft, because there always are;
Yacht, sweeper, sloop, and drifter, to-day as yesterday,
The big ships fight the battles, but the small craft clear the way.
They scout before the squadrons when mighty fleets engage;
They glean War's dreadful harvest when the fight has ceased to rage;
Too great they count no hazard, no task beyond their power,
And merchantmen bless small craft a hundred times an hour.
In Admirals' dispatches their names are seldom heard;
They justify their being by more than written word;
In battle, toil, and tempest, and dangers manifold
The doughty deeds of small craft will never all be told.
Scant ease, and scantier leisure—they take no heed of these,
For men lie hard in small craft when storm is on the seas;
A long watch and a weary, from dawn to set of sun—
The men who serve in small craft, their work is never done.
And if, as chance may have it, some bitter day they lie
Out-classed, out-gunned, out-numbered, with naught to do but die,
When the last gun's out of action, good-bye to ship and crew,
But men die hard in small craft, as they will always do.
Oh, death comes once to each man, and the game it pays for all,
And duty is but duty in great ship and in small,
And it will not vex their slumbers or make less sweet their rest,
Though there's never a big black headline for small craft going west.
Great ships and mighty captains—to these their meed of praise
For patience, skill, and daring, and loud victorious days;
To every man his portion, as is both right and fair,
But oh! forget not small craft, for they have done their share.
Small craft—small craft, from Scapa Flow to Dover,
Small craft—small craft, all the wide world over,
At risk of war and shipwreck, torpedo, mine, and shell,
All honour be to small craft, for oh, they've earned it well!
C. Fox-Smith
Reprinted by special permission of London "Punch"
EXTRACT FROM SPEECH OF
RT. HON. A. J. BALFOUR IN TORONTO
(May, 1917)
I come into Canada to a great free country, composed not only of friends, but of countrymen. We think the same thoughts, we live in the same civilization, we belong to the same Empire, and if anything could have cemented more closely the bonds of Empire, if anything could have made us feel that we were indeed of one flesh and one blood, with one common history behind us, if anything could have cemented these feelings, it is the consciousness that now for two years and a half we have been engaged in this great struggle, in which, I thank God, all North America is now at one. We have been engaged in this great struggle through these two years and a half, fighting together, when necessary making all our sacrifices in common, working together toward a common and victorious end, which I doubt not will crown our efforts.
May I, as a countryman of yours, though not a citizen of Toronto, may I say how profoundly the whole Empire feels the magnitude of the effort you have made, and how we value it for itself and for an example to all posterity, an evidence to the whole world of what the British Empire really means, not only for the whole of that civilized body of nations of which we form no inconsiderable part.
These are proud thoughts; they will some day be proud memories. We are associated together in a struggle never equalled yet in the history of the world, and I rejoice to think that in that struggle on which posterity will look back as the greatest effort made for freedom and civilization, the British Empire in every one of its constituent parts, and surely not least in this great Dominion, in this proud Province, and in this city not least, has shown what the unity of the Empire really means, and how vain were the anticipations of those who thought that we were constituted but a fair-weather Empire, to be dissolved into thin atoms at the first storm that should burst upon it.
We have, on the contrary, shown that the more storms beat on the fabric of our Empire the more firmly it held together, and were so far from shaking it in any single part. Events that have recently occurred, that are occurring, and that will occur in the future, will join every part of it together for ever in memories which will remain with us, the actors in this great drama, until we die, and which we shall be able to hand to our children and our grandchildren as long as civilization exists.