ays clean fighters, however much
they may have been despised by Nelson. They were never guilty of
cowardly revenge. They would not then, or now, send hospital ships to
the bottom with their crews and their human cargoes of wounded
soldiers and nurses. Nor would they indiscriminately sink merchant
vessels loaded with civilian passengers composed of men, women, and
children, and leave them to drown, as is the inhuman practice of the
German submarine crews of to-day.

The French in other days were our bitterest enemies, and we were
theirs. We charged each other with abominations only different from
what we and our Allies the French are saying about Germany to-day, who
was then our ally. We regarded Germany in the light of a downtrodden
nation who was being crushed and mutilated under the relentless heel
of the "Corsican Usurper." "Such is the rancorous hatred of the French
towards us," says Collingwood in January 1798, "that I do not think
they would make peace on any terms, until they have tried this
experiment (i.e. the invasion of England) on our country; and never
was a country assailed by so formidable a force"; and he goes on to
say, "Men of property must come forward both with purse and sword,
for the contest must decide whether they shall have anything, even a
country which they can call their own." This is precisely what we are
saying about Germany with greater reason every day at the present time
(1918).

It has been the common practice for German submarine commanders to
sink at sight British, neutral cargo, and passenger vessels, and
hospital ships loaded with wounded troops and nurses. They have put
themselves outside the pale of civilization since they forced the
whole world into conflict against them. Nothing has been too hideous
for them to do. They have blown poor defenceless fishermen to pieces,
and bombarded defenceless villages and towns, killing and maiming the
inhabitants.

Nelson's ardent soul must have been wearied with the perversity of the
"dead foul winds" (as he described his bitter fate to Ball) that
prevented him from piercing the Straits of Gibraltar against the
continuous easterly current that runs from the Atlantic and spreads
far into the Mediterranean with malicious fluctuations of velocity.
Many a gallant sailing-ship commander has been driven to despair in
other days by the friendly levanter failing them just as they were
wellnigh through the Gut or had reached the foot of the majest