From a Cornish Window / A New Edition - Arthur Quiller-Couch

"And what of the internal, of the social position? Consols have fallen to nearly 30; our vast investments in India have been lost; trade no longer exists.… The railways have no traffic to carry. … Banks and companies are failing daily. . . The East End of London is clamouring for bread and peace at any price. If we fall, we fall for ever.… The working man has to choose whether he will have lighter taxation for the moment, starvation and irretrievable ruin for the future…"

—And so on, till Z stands for Zero, or nothing at all. Or, as the late Mr. Lear preferred to write:—

"Z said, 'Here is a box of Zinc, Get in, my little master! We'll shut you up; we'll nail you down: we will, my little master! We think we've all heard quite enough of this your sad disaster!'"

To speak as seriously as may be, the language is no longer hortatory, like Holland's, but minatory, even comminatory. It is (as its author would not deny) the language of panic deliberately employed, a calculated attempt to strengthen the matériel of the navy at the cost of Englishmen's fears. Now let me define my feeling towards the Navy League. As an ordinary British citizen, I must heartily approve its aim of strengthening the navy and keeping it efficient. As an ordinary reasonable man, I must admit that its efforts, if rightly directed, may be of great national service. But language such as I have quoted must (so far as it is not merely contemptible) be merely demoralising, and anyone who works on the fears of a nation—and especially of a nation which declines conscription and its one undoubted advantage of teaching men what war means—does a harm which is none the less wicked for being incalculable. These Navy Leaguers cry incessantly for more material strength. They tell us that in material strength we should at least be equal to any two other countries. A few months pass, and then, their appetite growing with the terror it feeds upon, they insist that we must be equal to any three other countries. Also "it does not appear," they sagely remark, "that Nelson and his contemporaries left any record as to what the proportion of the blockading should bear (sic) to one blockaded,"—a curious omission of Nelson's, to be sure! He may perhaps have held that it depended on the quality of the antagonists.

To this a few ordinary stupid Britons like myself have always answered that no amount of matériel can ever replace morale; and that all such panic-making is a mischievous attempt to lower the breed, and the more mischievous because its mischief may for a while be imperceptible. We can see our warships growing: we cannot see the stamina decaying; yet it is our stamina on which we must rely finally in the fatal hour of trial. We said this, and we were laughed at; insulted as unpatriotic—a word of which one may say in kindness that it would not so readily leap to the lips of professional patriots if they were able to understand what it means and, by consequence, how much it hurts.

Yes, and behold, along comes Admiral Togo, and at one stroke proves that we were simply, absolutely and henceforward incontestably right! What were our little three-power experts doing on the morrow of Togo's victory? They are making irrelevant noises in the halfpenny press, explaining how Admiral Togo did it with an inferior force, and in a fashion that belies all their axioms. But I turn to The Times and I read:—

"The event shows that mere material equality is but as dust in the balance when weighed in the day of battle against superiority of moral equipment."