he tangled skeins, the complex
situations, the confusion and congestion that were all brought about by
extra mileage of an ocean voyage. Fortunes, not alone in hulls and
cargo, lie with our wreckage on the floor of the channels.

The sea-front suddenly assumed an importance in the general view, as the
drain on our tonnage left vacant shelves in the bakehouse. Commodities
that, so common and plentiful, had been lightly valued, were out of
stock--the ships had not come in! Long queues formed at the shop doors,
seeking and questioning--their topic, the fortunes of the ships! The
table was rearranged in keeping with a depleted larder. Anxious eyes
turned first in the morning to the list of our sea-casualties; the
ships, what of the ships? The valiant deeds of our armies, the tide and
toll of battles, could wait a second glance. Not all the gallantry of
our arms could bring victory if our sea-communications were imperilled
or restrained; on the due arrival of the ships centred the pivot of our
operations.

Joined to the fortune of the ships, interest was drawn to the seamen. A
new concern arose. Who were the mariners who had to face these deadly
perils to keep our sea-lines unbroken? Were they trained to arms? How
could they stand to the menace that had so shocked our naval forces?
Daily the toll rose. Savagery, undreamt of, succeeded mere shipwreck:
murder, assassination, mutilation became commonplace on the sea. Who
were the mercantile seamen; of what stock, what generation?

To a degree we were embarrassed at such new attention. The mystery of
sea-life, we felt, had unbalanced the public view. Our stock, our
generation, was the same as that of the tailors and the
candlestick-makers who were standing the enemy on his head on the
Flanders fields; we differed not greatly from the haberdasher and the
baby-linen man who drove the Prussian Guard, the proudest soldier in
Europe, from the reeking shambles of Contalmaison. Indeed, we had
advantage in our education for a fight. Our training, if not military,
was at least directed to mass operations in contest with power of the
elements: torpedo and mine were but additions to the perils of our
regular trade. If the clerk and the grocer could rise from ordered
peaceful ways and set the world ringing with his gallantry and heroism,
we were poltroons indeed to flinch and falter at the familiar conduct of
our seafaring. We felt that our share in warfare was as nothing to the
blaze of