Add to this well over a couple of hundred million tons of oil,
coal, and warlike stores; remember that this is by no means the whole
story, and that it takes no account of the regular trade; and you may
begin to understand what British sea-power meant in this war. In the
mere transportation of armies alone it meant the same thing as taking the
entire population of Canada, three times over, with all its baggage three
times over, and with its very houses three times over, across thousands
of miles of dangerous waters in the midst of the worst war ever known.
And yet, out of the more than twenty-two millions of men, less than five
thousand were killed on the way; and many of these were murdered in
hospital ships marked with the sacred Red Cross. The chances of safety
from murder and fair risks of war put together were nearly five thousand
to one. The chances of safety from fair risks of war by themselves were
nearly ten thousand to one.
No war, no navy, no sea-power since the world began, has any record to
compare with this.
"Let us be backed with God and with the seas,
Which He hath given for fence impregnable,
And with their helps, only, defend ourselves:
In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies.
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