war--

Eight million men moved across the seas--almost without mishap.

Nine million and a half tons of explosives carried to our own armies
and those of our Allies.

Over a million horses and mules; and--

Over forty-seven million gallons of petrol supplied to the armies.

And besides, twenty-five thousand ships have been examined for
contraband of war, on the high seas, or in harbour, since the war
began.

And at this, one must pause a moment to think--once again--what it
means; to call up the familiar image of Britain's ships, large and
small, scattered over the wide Atlantic and the approaches to the North
Sea, watching there through winter and summer, storm and fair, and so
carrying out, relentlessly, the blockade of Germany, through every
circumstance often of danger and difficulty; with every consideration
for neutral interests that is compatible with this desperate war, in
which the very existence of England is concerned; and without the
sacrifice of a single life, unless it be the lives of British sailors,
often lost in these boardings of passing ships, amid the darkness and
storm of winter seas. There, indeed, in these "wave-beaten" ships, as in
the watching fleets of the English Admirals outside Toulon and Brest,
while Napoleon was marching triumphantly about Europe, lies the root
fact of the war. It is a commonplace, but one that has been "proved upon
our pulses." Who does not remember the shock that went through
England--and the civilised world--when the first partial news of the
Battle of Jutland reached London, and we were told our own losses,
before we knew either the losses of the enemy or the general result of
the battle? It was neither fear, nor panic; but it was as though the
nation, holding its breath, realised for the first time where, for it,
lay the vital elements of being. The depths in us were stirred. We knew
in very deed that we were the children of the sea!

And now again the depths are stirred. The development of the submarine
attack has set us a new and stern task, and we are "straitened till it
be accomplished." The great battle-ships seem almost to have left the
stage. In less than three months, 626,000 tons of British, neutral and
allied shipping have been destroyed. Since the beginning of the war
we--Great Britain--have lost over two million tons of shipping, and our
Allies and the neutrals have lost almost as much. There is a certain
shortage of food in Great B