The last words of Mr. A. G. Gardiner’s article about him who is now dictating are these: “He is fighting his last great battle. And his foe is the veteran of the rival service. For in his struggle to establish conscription Lord Roberts’s most formidable antagonist is the author of the ‘Dreadnought.’” Well, once more resuming the Dardanelles story. These side-lights really illuminate the situation. These Armies we were raising incited us to these wild-cat expeditions. I haven’t reckoned them up, but there must have been a Baker’s Dozen of ’em going on. Now, do endeavour to get this vital fact into your mind. We are an Island. Every soldier that wants to go anywhere out of England--a sailor has got to carry him there on his back. Consequently, every soldier that you raise or enlist, or recruit, or whatever the proper word is, unless he is absolutely part of a Lord Lieutenant’s Army, never to go out of England and only recruited, like the Militia--that splendid force!--to be called up only in case of invasion--as I say, every soldier that is recruited on any other basis means so much tonnage in shipping that has to be provided, not only to take him to the Continent; but it’s got to be kept ready to bring him back, in case of his being wounded, and all the time to take him provisions, ammunition, stores. Those vessels again have to have other vessels to carry out coal for those vessels, and those colliers have again to be supplemented by other colliers to take the place of those removed from the normal trade, and the coal mines themselves necessitate more miners or the miners’ working beyond the hours of fatigue to bring forth the extra coal; or else the commercial work of the nation gets diminished and your economic resources get crippled, and that of itself carried _in extremis_ means finishing the war. As a matter of fact, it _has_ nearly finished the English Nation--the crippling of our economic resources by endeavouring to swell ourselves out like the Frog in Æsop’s Fables, and become a great continental Power--forgetting the Heaven-sent gift of an incomparable Navy dating from the time of Alfred the Great, and God’s providing a breakwater 600 miles long (the British Islands) in front of the German Coast to stop the German access to the ocean, and thus by easy blockade killing him from the sea as he was killed eventually. Alas! what happened? In the House of Commons the British Navy is called a subsidiary Service. And then Lord Rosebery doesn’t like my “frisking”; and cartoons represent that I want a job; and fossil Admirals call me immodest!