Germany made 1914 a year of blood; but let us remember it as also being the hundredth year of peace between the British, Americans, and French, those three great peoples who will, we hope, go on as friends henceforward, leading the world ever closer to the glorious goal of true democracy: that happier time when every boy and girl shall have at least the chance to learn the sacred trust of all self-government, and when most men and women shall have learnt this lesson well enough to use their votes for what is really best. CHAPTER XXI A CENTURY OF MINOR BRITISH WARS (1815-1914) During the hundred and nine years between Trafalgar and the Great War against the Germans the Royal Navy had no more fights for life or death. But it never ceased to protect the Empire it had done so much to make. It took part in many wars; it prevented many others; it helped to spread law and justice in the world; and, at the end of all this, it was as ready as ever to meet the foe. Sometimes it acted alone; but much oftener with the Army in joint expeditions, as it had for centuries. And here let us remind ourselves again that the Navy by itself could no more have made the Empire than the Army could alone. The United Service of both was needed for such work in the past, just as the United Service of these and of the Royal Air Force will be needed to defend the Empire in the future. Nor is this all we must remember; for the fighting Services draw their own strength from the strength of the whole people. So, whenever we talk of how this great empire of the free was won and is to be defended, let us never forget that it needed and it needs the patriotic service of every man and woman, boy and girl, whether in the fighting Services by sea and land and air or among those remaining quietly at home. One for all, and all for one. The Navy's first work after the peace of 1815 was to destroy the stronghold of the Dey of Algiers, who was a tyrant, enslaver, and pirate in one. This released thousands of Christian slaves and broke up Algerian slavery for ever. A few years later (1827) the French and British fleets, now happily allied, sank the Turkish fleet at Navarino, because the Sultan was threatening to kill off the Greeks. Then the Navy sent the Pasha of Egypt fleeing out of Beirut and Acre in Syria, closed in on Alexandria, and forced him to stop bullying the people of the whole Near East.