THE “AQUITANIA” LOUNGE AS ORDERLY ROOM 128 OFFICERS’ WARD IN THE SMOKING ROOM OF THE “AQUITANIA” 128 MEN’S WARD IN THE LOUNGE OF THE “AQUITANIA” 132 THE “FRANCONIA” SINKING 136 FOREWORD There was never a time in our history when the value of the Mercantile Marine to our national life was as apparent as it is to-day. After passing through the crucible of war, we are what we are, mainly, because we are the possessors of ships. When the Great War came, we possessed only a small, though highly trained, Army, and the guns of our Navy extended little further than high-water mark. How could we, a community of islanders, in partnership with other islanders living in Dominions thousands of miles away, hope to make our strength felt on the battlefields of the Continent of Europe, where the military Powers were mobilising conscript armies counted not by thousands, but by millions? The original Expeditionary Force, as finely tempered a fighting instrument as ever existed, was at once thrown across the Channel in merchant ships and it held in check the victorious army of Germany, saving by a miracle, the Channel ports; then, having mobilised on the eve of the declaration of war, the Royal Navy, the great protective force of the British peoples, we mobilised also the Merchant Navy, their essential sustaining force, bridged the oceans of the world, and concentrated on the conflict the enormous and varied powers of the 400,000,000 inhabitants of the Commonwealth. In Belgium and France as in the Pacific, in Gallipoli as in Eastern Africa, in Salonica as in Mesopotamia, and in Italy as in Palestine, British troops were soon confronting the forces of the Central Alliance; every ocean was dominated by British men-of-war. The enemies had the advantage of interior military lines, but by the aid of ships--carrying troops, munitions, and stores--we gradually forged a hoop of steel round them and slowly but irresistibly drew it tighter and tighter until, their economic power having been strangled by sea power, their naval and military power was weakened and they were compelled to sue for peace. If it had not been for our ships--ships of commerce drawing strength from the seas, and ships of war, efficiently policing those seas--the Allies could not by any possibility have won the Great War and Germans would to-day be the dominant race, not only in Europe, but in both hemispheres.