nemies, the gain will not be
to the world nor to the cause of peace.

The mistress of the seas will remain to ensure new combinations of
enmity to prohibit the one league of concord that alone can bring
freedom and peace to the world. The cause that begot this war will
remain to beget new wars.

The next victim of universal sea-power may not be on the ravaged
fields of mid-Europe, but mid the wasted coasts and bombarded seaports
of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

A permanent peace can only be laid on a sure foundation. A sure
foundation of peace among men can only be found when mastery of the
sea by one people has been merged in freedom of the seas for all.

Chapter II

THE KEEPER OF THE SEAS

As long ago as 1870 an Irishman pointed out that if the English press
did not abandon the campaign of prejudiced suspicion it was even then
conducting against Germany, the time for an understanding between
Great Britain and the German people would be gone for ever.

It was Charles Lever who delivered this shrewd appreciation of the
onlooker.

Writing from Trieste on August 29th, 1870, to John Blackwood, he
stated:

"Be assured the _Standard_ is making a great blunder by its
anti-Germanism and English opinion has _just now_ a value in Germany
which if the nation be once disgusted with us will be gone for ever."

Lever preserved enough of the Irishman through all his official
connection to see the two sides of a question and appreciate the point
of view of the other man.

What Lever pointed out during the early stages of the Franco-German
war has come to pass. The _Standard_ of forty years ago is the British
press of to-day, with here and there the weak voice of an impotent
Liberalism crying in the wilderness. Germany has, indeed, become
thoroughly disgusted and the hour of reconciliation has long since
gone by. In Lever's time it was now or never; the chance not taken
then would be lost for ever, and the English publicist of to-day
is not in doubt that it is now too late. His heart-searchings need
another formula of expression--no longer a conditional assertion of
doubt, but a positive questioning of impending fact, "is it too soon."
That the growing German navy must be smashed he is convinced, but how
or when to do it he is not so clear.

The situation is not yet quite intolerable, and so, although many urge
an immediate attack before the enemy grows too strong, the old-time
British love of compromise an