WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 327 



what the ocean means to us Britons, food being the 

 primal necessity ; but when food must needs be brought 

 from over the sea it must needs be bought and paid 

 for also. If food is grown or produced in the country 

 it may be exchanged for labour, but in the case of 

 imported food this direct exchange of labour is of no 

 avail. Therefore we need enormous imports of raw 

 material for our manufactures in order to employ the 

 army of workers who have no means of cultivating the 

 land. Every land is drawn upon for this raw material, 

 and in the importance of its free inflow it is scarcely 

 second to the importation of food. It is true that in 

 the immensely valuable items of coal and iron, by 

 means of which we have attained and keep our position 

 as the premier shipbuilders and shipowners of the 

 world, we have our own great resources within the land ; 

 but even then we import vast quantities of ore from 

 Spain and Norway and Sweden. Then when these raw 

 materials are worked up into the finished articles by 

 the skill and industry of our workers, our ships come 

 into requisition again to carry them to whatever 

 nations will buy. But not only are our ships thus 

 employed for our own needs, but they also have the 

 greatest share in international ocean commerce, carriers 

 for the world, and earning vast sums thereby. What 

 those sums are may be faintly guessed by the following 

 figures for the year 1904, which I may be forgiven for 

 quoting in view of the importance of the subject. Our 

 aggregate tonnage of merchant shipping is 10,500,000, 

 the total value of our imports 596,500,000 sterling, 

 and of our exports over 417,000,000. And in the 

 same year 1904 we spent 41,696,313 on the Navy, 

 not a high insurance premium on so vast a property. 



