326 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



speed, that is to say, of from ten to fourteen miles 

 an hour, represents really the backbone of British 

 commerce, and it needs only the merest glance at a 

 publication like Lloyds Kegister of Shipping to realize 

 how vast are the number of hostages to fortune which 

 we have given; in other words, how vital is the 

 possession of an overwhelmingly strong British Navy 

 to protect our commerce scattered over every ocean of 

 the globe. I am not now concerned in the controversy 

 whether, given sufficient reason, therefore, we could not 

 produce from the soil of these islands sufficient food 

 to feed our teeming populations personally, I believe 

 that we could do so ; I only state a fact which should 

 be well known to all persons old enough to think, that 

 in the event of war with a first-rate power, five-sixths 

 of the population of these isles would be starving 

 within a fortnight should our Navy fail to protect our 

 commerce. Nay, we should begin to feel the pinch the 

 moment that war was declared, and that in a way that 

 no other nation would, for the price of food would 

 immediately rise to an inordinate height and the 

 consequent suffering would be terrible. I remember 

 very vividly at the time of the Penjdeh scare when, 

 had we gone to war with Russia, our command of the 

 sea would never have been even challenged, except by 

 privateers preying upon our isolated ships, that the 

 very rumour alone sent up the price of wheat in the 

 case of the cargo of the ship in which I was sailing 

 nearly two shillings a bushel, much of which rise was, of 

 course, the work of unscrupulous speculators ; but still 

 there would have been an undoubted increase in the 

 price. 



Hitherto I have only dealt with the food aspect of 



