The British Navy in Battle

s,

cers and Men of the Royal Navy

rvice and the landsmen who ha

ng or fighting for t

ho are serving-much aga

shes and gratitude

at first sight, reasonable to carry the conventional phrase further and wish you a Happy New Year. But happiness is a different thing from merriment. In the strictest sense of the word y

-and for your sakes, because your glory would be somehow lessened if it did not happen-we too could wish that this could happen. But we wish it only because you do. Although you do not grumble, though we hear no fretful word, we realize how wearing and how wearying your ceaseless watch must be. It is a watchfulness that could not be what it is, unless you hoped, and indeed more

of yachts and pleasure boats. It was the sea that had been ruled so proudly by your fathers that drew you. And you, as the youngest of the race, went to it as the heirs to a stern and noble heritage. So, almost from the nursery have you been vowed to a life of hardship and of self-denial, of peril and

here could only be one answer. In no other case has an enemy ship sought action with a British ship. In every other case the enemy has been forced to fight, and made to fly. It was so from the first. When two small cruisers penetrated the waters of Heligoland with a flotilla of destroyers, the enemy kept his High Seas Fleet, his fast cruisers, and his well-gunned armoured ships in the ignoble safety of his harbours and his canal. He left, to his shame, his small cruisers to fight their battle alone. Tyrwhitt and Blo

ely have you done it that not a single transport or supply ship has been impeded between this country and France. From the first there has not been, nor can there now ever be, the slightest threat or the remotest danger of these islands being invaded. Indeed, so utter and complete

stands to-day on a pinnacle of power

ought that it always could so strike, till madness was piled upon madness, and it seemed as if the very laws of force had been upset, and ships and guns things obsolete and of no use. But you have always known-and we at last are learning-that

found its only success in attacking unarmed merchant ships. These are only unarmed because the people of Christendom had never realized that any of its component nations could turn to barbarism, piracy, and even murder in war. It would have been so easy, had this utter lapse into devilry been expected, to have arme

accomplished its purpose at so small a cost in unpreventable loss, or wi

o their purpose, more closely and wisely considered? For when so much had changed, the details of naval war had to differ greatly from the anticipation. In the long years of peace-that seem so infinitely far behind us now-you had for a generation and a half been administered by a department almost entirely civilian i

that you alone stood between the nation and defeat if war should come. But war seemed so unreal and remote t

ry that your task was not made more easy for you. Hence you took civilian domination, civilian ignorance, and civilian indifference to the things that matter, all for granted, and submitted to them dumbly and humbly, as you submitted silent and unprotesting to your other hardships; you were resigned to th

y, we do not waste it on you. But we fully expect you to spend your money in our service. The naval officer's pay is calculated to meet his expenses9 in time of peace. Now a very large proportion of the pay of cadets, midshipmen, sub-lieutenants, and lieutenants necessarily goes in uniform and clothes. The life

l the land. If France can endure, and if Russia can "come again"; if Great Britain has the time to raise the armies that will turn the scale; if the Allies can draw upon the world for the metal and food that make victory-and waiting for victory-possible;

y you a pension proportionate to the value of your work, and the dangers and responsibilities that you have shouldered, and to the strenuous, self-sacrificing lives that you have led, for our sakes. We may do more. We may see to it that honours ar

this bright side to it. You will continue to serve us as you have always served us, working for nothing, content so you are allowed to rema