I have been compelled, in truth, to say many hard things of the Merchant Service, but there is such a thing as speaking the truth in love. And as I love the Merchant Service with all my heart, and desire most earnestly to see it flourish and prosper more and more, I am the more anxious that nothing I have said will be taken as spoken in a carping or pessimistic spirit. I want to see the Mercantile Marine purged of the foreigner, not because I hate the foreigner of any nation, but because this peculiarly and particularly maritime nation of ours cannot afford, in the face of the undoubted hatred manifested towards it by practically every continental people, to allow the life of its citizens to be dependent upon the good-will of aliens. In spite of what not only continental writers, but many of our own scribes, may and do say about our unctuous hypocrisy, there can be no doubt that the chief characteristic of the British nation to-day is its careless magnanimity. Warned by innumerable writers of the risks we wilfully expose ourselves to, we go on with a good-natured shrug of the shoulders in the same reckless fashion. We welcome, as if we were in a new colony with millions of acres undeveloped, with all our resources at their spring-tide, a continuous flood of aliens to our shores and in our ships. We not only give them all the advantages we ourselves possess, but actually strain a point, wherever possible, in their favour. Finding no reciprocity anywhere, no feeling of kindliness for all our generous treatment of aliens, we are unmoved, nor is our policy, or want of policy, altered. And this grand air of indifference, which is not assumed, but real, is to the last degree galling to our continental neighbours. Their attitude becomes daily more difficult to understand. Rejoicing to see how we are, as they firmly believe, exposing all our most vital, most vulnerable points to their attack, both in matters of war and peace, they are yet almost frantic with rage at what they are pleased to call our abominable insular insolence, our refusal to be frightened of them. I do not pretend to justify our insouciant attitude, I only note its universal presence.