"This precious stone set in the silver sea"
protected by the waters as a house is protected by a moat "against the envy of less happier lands." The historians have expounded the advantages of her position. We were happy in that we were islanders, inhabiting a natural and impregnable fortress. The sea was our bulwark, to us it was no barrier, to the enemy an impassable one. The romantic mood is, however, difficult to maintain and of late the coming and going of some ten or eleven thousand British ships has been productive of little emotion. As a rule the landsman "dismisses the sea with a shudder." Rocks and shoals and icebergs and dark nights and fogs and the making of difficult harbours and winds of strength "8" on the Beaufort scale, are not things that habitually occupy his mind. Hourly our seamen were engaged in the routine of a perilous calling. Two thousand of them in times of peace lose their lives every year. We were not much concerned. But the submarine has now come to our assistance. It has at least this to its credit that we view our insularity with less composure. We see now that there are two sides to this blessing of insularity. We know now that every ton of food brought into the country is purchased with men's lives, and that is an arresting thought. We know, too, that if they do not continue to bring it we are in very evil case, a still more arresting and unfamiliar idea. We have had episodes and hours and experience it will not be easy to forget. There is something to be said for the submarine. It has proved to us that not to our encircling sea, but to our sailors we owe our good fortune; that the sea is as ready to ruin as to enrich us; that in them, not in her, we must put our trust. "The one thing," it has been said, "that would really wake the nation to the vital importance of the Merchant Navy would be for the butcher, the baker and the grocer to cease to ring the back-door bell every morning." Well, we have come within measurable distance of that and can now turn with the more appreciation to the anxieties and trials of the men who have averted the catastrophes.
"It was passing beautiful to see, and to think of," says the old chronicler of a sea battle in the Edwardian days; "the glistening armour, the flags and streamers glancing and quivering in the wind." The beauty and the bravado which lingered on till Nelson's time are gone. Gone too are the courtesy and chivalry of the old sea battles. You need not go for romance, with the pleasant sting of brine in it, to the ugly and stealthy story of the German submarine. A dull monotonous history from first to last, as he who cares to turn over the Admiralty files will find; a baleful, intolerable, damnable repetition. The very extent and enormity of the record deadens all sensibility, so that one soon reads mechanically, giving no thought to the matter, however melancholy. Let us set down some sentences, each a verbal extract from the official record.
"The crew were mustered after the explosion and five men were missing."
"While abandoning the ship the chief engineer was killed by the enemy's fire, and two of the crew were wounded."
"Two of the crew were not seen after the explosion."
"Two of the crew were killed and two were scalded."
"Of the fifteen who left the ship only the chief officer and three others were saved."
"While the ship was being abandoned the enemy continued to fire, hitting the ship and wounding five men."
"One man who had been badly scalded died on board the patrol which picked up the boat."