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; 1,000,000 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.
No. I.
There came from Australia at his own expense, one Thomas Harper, an old man of seventy-four, to help in a British munition factory. He laboured hard, doing the work of two men, and more than once fainted with fatigue, but refused to go home because he "couldn't rest while he thought his country needed shells."
No. II.
There is a certain small fishing village whose men were nearly all employed in fishing for mines. But there dawned a black day when news came that forty of their number had perished together and in the same hour. Now surely one would think that this little village, plunged in grief for the loss of its young manhood, had done its duty to the uttermost for Britain and their fellows! But these heroic fisher-folk thought otherwise, for immediately fifty of the remaining seventy-five men (all over military age) volunteered and sailed away to fill the places of their dead sons and brothers.
No. III.