Landsmen are many while seamen are few. So the world thinks more of armies than of fleets. Our enemies hate all British sea-power, while our friends never know the half of what it means. So friend and foe alike are apt to side against us by making the laws against blockading fleets very much harder than those against besieging armies.
All we can do is to stand firmly on our perfect rights and show the world the five good reasons why:—
1. The sea and land have equal rights. Blockading fleets are like besieging armies. So if besieging armies have the right to stop supplies from reaching the places they besiege, why should blockading fleets be told to let supplies go through?
2. All parts of our great Empire are joined together, not by land, but sea. So if we lose our rights of self-defence at sea we lose the very breath of life.
3. We claim no rights we will not share with others. When the American blockade of the South during the Civil War (1861-5) ruined the British cotton trade we never interfered, though we had by far the stronger navy.
4. We have never used the British Navy to bully weak nations out of their oversea possessions. Who could have stopped our taking the Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese possessions in Africa and Asia?
5. British sea-power has always been on the side of freedom; and every time a tyrant has tried to fight his way to world-dominion the Royal Navy has been the backbone of all the forces that have laid him low.
THE CANADIAN
I never saw the cliffs of snow,
The Channel billows tipped with cream,
The restless, eddying tides that flow
About the Island of my dream.
I never saw the English downs
Upon an April day,
The quiet, old Cathedral towns,
The hedgerows white with may.