THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 



IN spite of the admiration and affection I feel I hope 

 in common with all other Britons for the British 

 Navy and its glorious history, it is, I confess, with 

 the greatest possible reluctance that I approach this 

 portion of my subject. War in any form is, to my 

 thinking, a horrible, bestial thing, and its exercise 

 indicates that the people who commence it are lost to 

 all the higher feelings of humanity, unless, indeed, 

 they are driven to take up arms as a last resource in 

 order to save themselves and those dear to them from 

 slavery, in which case the onus rests upon the aggressor, 

 although he may not have actually committed the 

 initial act of war. But dreadful as war is anywhere, 

 it will surely be admitted that it is pre-eminently so 

 upon the sea. Man's conquest of the sea as a highway 

 for commercial purposes has been and remains one 

 of the crowning achievements of humanity ; that he 

 should calmly pursue his avocation upon this treacher- 

 ous and foreign element sets the seal upon his posi- 

 tion in creation. But that he should degrade this 

 magnificent triumph of mind over matter to the 

 shameful purposes of subjugating, despoiling, and 

 slaying his fellow man is to afford an object-lesson of 

 the most striking kind of the heights to which man 

 can soar and the depths to which he will drag himself 



257 S 



