OUR FOOD SUPPLY IN TIME OF WAR 319 



are decided and unqualified, and ought to carry the 

 greatest weight with the outside public. Sir Nowell 

 Salmon, admiral of the fleet, said on that occasion : 

 " We may hope to a certain extent, but not at the be- 

 ginning of a war, the trade routes may be kept free ; 

 at the commencement of a war I have no doubt they 

 would be very much interfered with." He goes on to 

 quote the opinion of the secretary of Lloyd's to the 

 following effect : "No form of insurance was practical 

 except keeping up a strong navy and army, and also, 

 as a second line of defence, a reserve of wheat." 



Admiral Harding Close said on the same subject : — 



"We spend 31 millions a year on the Navy. You 

 might as well chuck that money into the sea for all 

 the good it will do, for what is the use of our going to 

 sea and winning battles of Trafalgar if we leave a 

 starving population behind ? . . . It is no use your 

 boasting that we have a powerful navy, and that 

 therefore, having command of the sea, our food supply 

 is safe. You cannot get a naval officer to say so. 

 We never had command of the sea, so far as the 

 protection of our merchant ships is concerned. If 

 there was a period in the history of this country when 

 we might say we had command of the sea, surely it 

 was after the battle of Trafalgar, when there was not 

 an enemy left on the sea. Yet after that battle, 

 hundreds of our merchant ships were captured ; and 

 it will be so again. We cannot protect our merchant 

 ships ; the thing is impossible. But I believe this also, 

 that a blockade of our ports is impossible. The true 

 blockade will be the impossibility of our ten thousand 

 slow merchant ships obtaining any insurance and being 

 laid up as useless, as the United States merchant ships 

 were laid up when the ' Alabama ' was about. This 

 will prevent the weekly arrival of the four hundred 

 merchant ships which bring us our food, and cause 



