The English Press, which had been so self-denying and loyal to the Government in spite of the shameful manner in which it had been gagged and bound down, until the Censor's blue-pencilling amounted almost to an entire suppression of news, began to grumble and to hint very broadly that the bombastic utterances of our Ministers regarding the effectiveness of our blockade and the starvation of the Central Powers were exaggerations and not facts. Men who had always put their country before any other consideration began to proclaim that the so-called blockade was a delusion; whilst they quoted figures of imports to neutral countries which were embarrassing to the Government. Something therefore had to be done. The notorious Danish Agreement[19] was accordingly framed in secret (in secret only from the British public), and a very highly-coloured and altogether misleading interpretation of its limitations and effectiveness was hinted at in Parliament. In spite of terrific pressure upon Ministers by members of both Houses, not a clause of this extraordinary document was permitted to be published, although its context was freely circulated or commented upon in the Press of neutral countries and the whole Agreement was printed _in extenso_ on December 12th, 1915, in the _Borsen_, at Copenhagen. What a sham and a farce this whole arrangement turned out to be will be seen later. It has ever been the proud boast of Englishmen that Britannia rules the waves. Until this war the British Navy had been supreme mistress of the seas, and no loyal person within the Empire whereon the sun never sets has grudged a penny of the very heavy taxation which has been necessary to keep up the efficiency of our Fleet. From the commencement of the war, however, our Fleet was tied up body and soul, shackled in the intricacies of red tape entanglements woven round its keels, guns, and propellers by lawyer politicians who never could leave the management of naval affairs to the Navy, any more than they could leave the management of military affairs to the Army. In theory these pedantic illusionists may be superb, whilst some of them even stated (1915-16) that if they were removed from office during the continuance of the war it would be a calamity. But in practice the British public has seen proved too vividly--and at what a cost!--only an incessant stream of terrible disasters and mishaps; "milestones" in their policy of makeshift, dawdle and defeat. The first chapter in this book shows that our party system Government was probably directly responsible for the war itself, or at least for our being precipitated unprepared into it. Without a shadow of a doubt it is solely accountable for the wild and riotously extravagant waste, for our colossal supererogation, and for our excessive losses.