As for ourselves and our lack of foresight in this matter, let us not be too critical. We misjudged human nature, that is all. We believed some species of it were extinct. We believed there were things of which white men were not capable. For this noble error, and it was noble, we pay the price, and are not without compensation. Since none can judge of a vessel's seaworthiness in harbour, none can judge of the spirit of a man or race until it encounters the storm. And if again the superb courage and shining of the British sailor has been proved, if we have been reminded that as a nation with him we stand or fall, we may be magnanimous, and return polite thanks to an enemy that has made these things clear, who has liberated yet again the flashing spirit of liberty. The stars still shine for us above the wild weather of the world.
In any weather They flock'd together, Birds of a feather, Through Dover Strait;
The seas that kiss'd her Brought tramp or drifter From ports that miss'd her In flag and freight;
Trawler and whaler And deep-sea sailer, They would not fail her At danger's gate.
Almost before a gun had spoken the fishermen rallied to their country's aid. Some few indeed were off the Danish coast or far North, Iceland way, unconscious that a more feverish business than fishing had begun, and heard the astonishing news only on their return from waters already troubled. Which of us knows anything of this community or thought it essential to our naval efficiency? Yet if anywhere the spirit of personal independence survives, they cherish it these men, Britons to the bone, wedded to freedom since their ancestors came in their long galleys out of the North East to harry the Saxon farmers. Take English and Scotch together and you may number the East Coast fishermen at a hundred thousand, and their ships, trawlers and drifters, accustomed to voyage to the Polar ice or the White Sea, at some three thousand six hundred. Of these perhaps four hundred of the slower and more ancient craft, the lame ducks of the flotillas, some of them of outlandish type and antiquated gear, manned by boys and men past service in the wars, still drag their trawls or lie to their nets to keep the markets supplied. Since eighty per cent of our spoils of the sea go abroad in normal times, the home supplies can be maintained by the reduced fleet. The rest, over three thousand, steamers and rare sea-boats all, are in national employ, often with their crews complete and handled by the skippers who know them, proud warrant officers now in His Majesty's fleet, and working for the most part in groups commanded by some Lieutenant of the Royal Naval Reserve, a Commodore, in his way, with a squadron admirals might envy. Many of the fisher folk belonged to the Reserve and joined the fighting fleets, and practically all of military age are long since involved in the sea affair. Two things belong to the story--these men, whether of Grimsby or Hull, Cardiff or Leith, or any other of the great centres, were volunteers, and assess their motives for what you will, it was not the Government wage that brought them. Their fellows, old men, still on the fishing grounds, do a thriving business compared with that for which the Government pays its few shillings a day. It is well that the country should know that the work for which no gold can pay was not undertaken for gold, and that they have held on as mine-sweepers when as fishermen they would have lain snugly in harbour. "If there have been frozen feet in the trenches there have been frozen fingers on the sea," says one. "Fifteen hours of drenching and buffeting were our portion that day. The vessel with the pull of the tackle and the drive of the engines keeping her like a half tide rock, never clear of sweeping seas. Thud, slap, crash and swish as they came over our bows and swirled along the deck, never ceasing." They were needed, every man of them. For it happened that in this most civilised warfare machines were employed with which, search the world round for them, no other men could effectively deal. But for their never resting labours the seas about these islands would have been as impassable for ships as a tropical forest for a motor car. Let us open our eyes and acknowledge the grandiosity of the German mind, the spaciousness of its schemes. It is not characteristic of Germany to do things by halves and the simple may well be amazed at the grandeur of her mine-laying campaign.