Who wants to be a raw recruit for life, all thumbs and
muddle-mindedness? Well, that is what a boy or girl is bound to be
when he or she grows up without knowing what the Royal Navy of our
Motherland has done to give the British Empire birth, life, and
growth, and all the freedom of the sea. The Navy is not the whole
of British sea-power; for the Merchant Service is the other half.
Nor is the Navy the only fighting force on which our liberty
depends; for we depend upon the United Service of sea and land and
air. Moreover, all our fighting forces, put together, could not
have done their proper share toward building up the Empire, nor
could they defend it now, unless they always had been, and are
still, backed by the People as a whole, by every patriot man and
woman, boy and girl. But while it takes all sorts to make the
world, and very many different sorts to make and keep our British
Empire of the Free, it is quite as true to say that all our other
sorts together could not have made, and cannot keep, our Empire,
unless the Royal Navy had kept, and keeps today, true watch and
ward over all the British highways of the sea. None of the
different parts of the world-wide British Empire are joined
together by the land. All are joined together by the sea. Keep the
seaways open and we live. Close them and we die. This looks, and
really is, so very simple, that you may well wonder why we have to
speak about it here. But man is a land animal. Landsmen are many,
while seamen are few; and though the sea is three times bigger than
the land it is three hundred times less known. History is full of
sea-power, but histories are not; for most historians know little
of sea-power, though British history without British sea-power is
like a watch without a mainspring or a wheel without a hub. No
wonder we cannot understand the living story of our wars, when, as
a rule, we are only told parts of what happened, and neither how
they happened nor why they happened. Thehow and why are the flesh
and blood, the head and heart of history; so if you cut them off
you kill the living body and leave nothing but dry bones. Now, in
our long war story no single how or why has any real meaning apart
from British sea-power, which itself has no meaning apart from the
Royal Navy. So the choice lies plain before us: either to learn
what the Navy really means, and know the story as a veteran should;
or else leave out, or perhaps mislearn, the Navy's part, and be a
raw recruit for life, all thumbs and muddle-mindedness.
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