To this a few ordinary stupid Britons like myself have always answered that no amount of _materiel_ can ever replace _morale_; and that all such panic-making is a mischievous attempt to lower the breed, and the more mischievous because its mischief may for a while be imperceptible. We can see our warships growing: we cannot see the stamina decaying; yet it is our stamina on which we must rely finally in the fatal hour of trial. We said this, and we were laughed at; insulted as unpatriotic--a word of which one may say in kindness that it would not so readily leap to the lips of professional patriots if they were able to understand what it means and, by consequence, how much it hurts. Yes, and behold, along comes Admiral Togo, and at one stroke proves that we were simply, absolutely and henceforward incontestably right! What were our little three-power experts doing on the morrow of Togo's victory? They are making irrelevant noises in the halfpenny press, explaining how Admiral Togo did it with an inferior force, and in a fashion that belies all their axioms. But I turn to _The Times_ and I read:-- "The event shows that mere material equality is but as dust in the balance when weighed in the day of battle against superiority of moral equipment." --Which, when you come to think of it, is precisely what Bacon meant when he wrote:-- "Walled Townes, stored Arcenalls and Armouries, Goodly Races of Horse, Chariots of Warre, Elephants, Ordnance, Artillery and the like: all this is but a Sheep in a Lion's skin except the Breed and disposition of the People be stout and warlike. Nay, Number (it selfe) in Armies importeth not much where the People is of weake Courage: For (as _Virgil_ saith) _it never troubles a Wolfe how many the Sheepe be_." Do our friends of the Navy League seriously believe that a principle as old as humankind can be suddenly upset by the invention of a submarine or of some novelty in guns? Even in their notions of what material strength means I hold them to be mistaken. The last resource which a nation ought to neglect is its financial credit. It was Walpole's long policy of peace which made possible Pitt's conquests. But I hold with far stronger conviction that he does wickedly who trades on a nation's cowardice to raise money for its protection. An old text, my masters! It seems a long while that some of us were preaching it in vain until Admiral Togo came along and proved it. I observe that a Member of Parliament for a West of England constituency (a better fellow than Mr. Blank, too) has been using one of the arguments with which these precious experts attacked me; that because I sometimes write novels I cannot be supposed to think seriously on public affairs. My only wonder is that those who hold this cloistral view of the province of a man of letters consider him worthy to pay income-tax.