a service. The
reserve ships had long been unfit to put to sea, the reserve crews had,
for all practical purposes, become landsmen--landsmen among whom want of
sea-going discipline had of late produced many mutinous outbreaks.

It had been said by the most famous admiral of the time, and said
without much exaggeration, that, within twelve months of "The
Destroyers'" abandonment of the traditional two-Power standard of
efficiency, the British Navy had "fallen to half-Power standard." The
process was quickened, of course, by the unprecedented progress of the
German Navy during the same period. It was said that at the end of 1907
the German Government had ships of war building in every great dockyard
in the world. It is known that the entire fleet of the "Kaiser" class
torpedo-boats and destroyers was built and set afloat at the German
Emperor's own private expense.

Then there were the "Well-borns," as they were called--vessels of no
great weight of metal, it is true, but manned, armed, officered, and
found better perhaps than any other war-ships in the world; entirely at
the instigation of the German Navy League, and out of the pockets of the
German nobility. The majority of our own wealthy classes preferred
sinking their money in German motor-cars and German pleasure resorts; or
one must assume so, for it is well known that our Navy League had long
since ceased to exert any active influence, because it was unable to
raise funds enough to pay its office expenses.

Our Navy might have had a useful reserve to draw upon in the various
auxiliary naval bodies if these had not, one by one, been abolished. The
Mercantile Marine was not in a position to lend much assistance in this
respect, for our ships at that time carried eighty-seven thousand
foreign officers and men, three parts of whom were Teutons. These facts
were presumably all well known to the heads and governing bodies of the
various trades, and, that being so, the extremely pessimistic attitude
adopted by them, directly the fact of invasion was established, is
scarcely to be wondered at.

In banking, insurance, underwriting, stock and share dealing,
manufacturing, and in every branch of shipping the lead of the bakers
were followed, and in many cases exceeded. The premiums asked in
insurance and underwriting, and the unprecedented advance in the
bank-rate, corresponding as it did with a hopeless "slump" in every
stock and share quoted on the Stock Exchange, from