I have before me so many documents and so much data bearing on this vast subject that I might set down very much more; I might descant on marvels of enterprise and organisation and of almost insuperable difficulties overcome. But, lest I weary the reader, and since I would have these lines read, I will hasten on to the last of my facts and figures.
As regards ships, Britain has already placed six hundred vessels at the disposal of France and four hundred have been lent to Italy, the combined tonnage of these thousand ships being estimated at two million.
Then, despite her drafts to Army and Navy she has still a million men employed in her coal mines and is supplying coal to Italy, France and Russia. Moreover, she is sending to France one quarter of her total production of steel, munitions of all kinds to Russia and guns and gunners to Italy.
As for her Navy—the German battle squadrons lie inactive, while in one single month the vessels of the British Navy steamed over one million miles; German trading ships have been swept from the seas and the U-boat menace is but a menace still. Meantime, British shipyards are busy night and day; a million tons of craft for the Navy alone were launched during the first year of the war, and the programme of new naval construction for 1917 runs into hundreds of thousands of tons. In peace time the building of new merchant ships was just under 2,000,000 tons yearly, and despite the shortage of labour and difficulty of obtaining materials, 1,100,000 tons will be built by the end of 1917, and 4,000,000 tons in 1918.
The British Mercantile Marine (to whom be all honour!) has transported during the war, the following:—
| 13,000,000 | men, |
| 25,000,000 | tons of war material, |
| 1,000,000 | sick and wounded, |
| 51,000,000 | tons of coal and oil fuel, |
| 2,000,000 | horses and mules, |
| 100,000,000 | hundredweights of wheat, |
| 7,000,000 | tons of iron ore, |
and, beyond this, has exported goods to the value of £500,000,000.
Here ends my list of figures and here this chapter should end also; but, before I close, I would give, very briefly and in plain language, three examples of the spirit animating this Empire that to-day is greater and more worthy by reason of these last three blood-smirched years.