The future of Mercantile Marines is the future of trade itself; for shipping not merely takes goods to market, but actually creates those markets in localities hitherto undeveloped. The sailing ship as an ocean-carrier is certainly fast disappearing, and everything now is reckoned on a basis of economy, but with strict regard to speed and efficiency. The need for shipping, apart from temporary slumps in the cycle of trade through prosperity to depression, must increase as the resources of the world become greater. If the tramp steamer forces her way up a shallow river and finds an abundance of a certain commodity which by some sudden turn in social life is much in demand in London or New York, this new trade will go on and on until a town is built on the banks, the river is dredged, and eventually liners call there not for cargoes, but to bring passengers. The town needs its regular mail service, the inhabitants require costly manufactured goods from England or America; and so, in the end, it grows to be a colony with its own special exports and imports. The arrival of every ship increases the trade, agents from commercial corporations land and start a new vein of development. Finally, after a couple of centuries, perhaps, the colony decides to have its own merchant fleet, and after it has got thoroughly used to this, and had some risk of war, it realises that its Merchant Marine must be protected by a fighting Navy. To-day Australia has its own liners, and Navy, and yet it was only in 1788 that the first thousand settlers landed there. In the exchange of wealth the sea is, so to speak, the counter across which the deal is done. You may live inland and forget all about the sea; you may hate it or you may fear it; but it is there all the time, and it means everything to any ambitious community. It is by means of the merchant ship that the sea is, partially at least, controlled for the sake of land development and the convenience of communities. CHAPTER XX THE FUTURE OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE If the attention of the reader has been thus far secured, he will have appreciated the fact that to any nation owning a seaboard the possession of a Mercantile Marine is as important as having a fighting Navy. We have seen that Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Japan—not to mention the rest—all realise more than ever the prime importance of an efficient and adequate merchant fleet. You find this in the official statements as well as in the remarks by their shipping experts. As we said at the beginning of this volume, it has taken a great war to cause this right thinking, but you may be assured that from now onwards the merchant fleets are coming into their own, and the service is going to be regarded before long with some of the old respect that was ascribed to it in the palmiest days of the sailing ship.