Thoughtless, for instance, were the words that (in all innocence, I
believe) came on the lips of a prominent statesman making in the House of
Commons an eulogistic reference to the British Merchant Service. In this
name I include men of diverse status and origin, who live on and by the
sea, by it exclusively, outside all professional pretensions and social
formulas, men for whom not only their daily bread but their collective
character, their personal achievement and their individual merit come
from the sea. Those words of the statesman were meant kindly; but, after
all, this is not a complete excuse. Rightly or wrongly, we expect from a
man of national importance a larger and at the same time a more
scrupulous precision of speech, for it is possible that it may go echoing
down the ages. His words were:
"It is right when thinking of the Navy not to forget the men of the
Merchant Service, who have shown--and it is more surprising because they
have had no traditions towards it--courage as great," etc., etc.
And then he went on talking of the execution of Captain Fryatt, an event
of undying memory, but less connected with the permanent, unchangeable
conditions of sea service than with the wrong view German minds delight
in taking of Englishmen's psychology.
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