of Keyes and Tyrwhitt. It must be clear, from the beginning to the end of the vast record, that the British blood has equalled and surpassed its ancient fame--that in every rank the old virtues of courage, coolness, and endurance, of ordered energy and human kindliness, have been, not the occasional distinction, but the common characteristics of our men. Look where you will on the scene of war, you must be shown ‘a theme of action treated in heroic proportions and style’--fit, at least, to indicate the greatness of the national spirit. In this book our concern is with the war at sea, and with a part only of that gigantic effort. But of this part, every word that has been said holds good. The submarine and anti-submarine campaign is not a series of minor operations. Its history is not a mere episode among chapters of greater significance. On the contrary, the fate of Britain, and the fate of Germany, were speedily seen to be staked upon the issue of this particular contest, as they have been staked upon no other part of the world-wide struggle. The entrance of America into the fellowship of nations was involved in it. The future of civilisation depends upon it. Moreover, in its course the British seaman has shown himself possessed, in the highest degree, of the qualities by which his forefathers conquered and kept our naval predominance; and finally, it is in the submarine war that we see most sharply the contrast of the spirit of chivalry with the spirit of savagery; of the law of humanity with the lawlessness of brute force; of the possible redemption of social life with its irretrievable degradation. It is a subject worthy, thrice over, of treatment in a national epic. The present book is not an epic--it is not a poetical work at all. Half of it is mere technical detail; and the rest plain fact plainly told. But it is far from my intention that the sense of admiration for national heroes, or the recognition of national greatness, shall be absent from it. I have used few epithets; for they seemed to me needless and inadequate. The stories of the voyages and adventures of our own submarines, and of the fighting of our men against the pirates, need no heightening. They need only to be read and understood; and it is chiefly with a view to their better understanding, that the reader is offered a certain amount of comment and description in the earlier chapters. But a suggestion or two may be made here, at the very beginning, in the hope of starting a train of thought which may accompany the narrative with a whisper of historic continuity--a reminder that as with men, so with nations--none becomes utterly base on a sudden, or utterly heroic. Their vices and their virtues are the harvesting of their past.