It is curious to observe how thoroughly most of us are the slaves of habit, how limited we are in our imagination and sympathies until something surprising, far-reaching and inevitable upsets our routine, introduces a new force into our life and compels us to take note of fresh interests. Until the recent war most people took the Mercantile Marine for granted. In a vague sort of way the average person believed in it, but rarely if ever stopped to consider what it meant or whether it had any history. It was sufficient to concede the fact that there were steamers running every week to most parts of the globe, and that passengers and goods could be carried as convenient. But there was not the same enthusiasm extended to the Mercantile Marine as there was to the doings of the Royal Navies; and unless some new mammoth steamship advertised herself by her size, speed or luxury, the Merchant Service was allowed to continue its all-important work unheeded and almost despised. But then came the sudden change, which gave an entirely different viewpoint. How few of us ever realise our good fortune until it is taken away from our hold! The increasing success of the U-boat campaign, culminating in the enormous sinkings of merchantmen in April 1917, and the consequent shortage of food in the British Isles, caused the inhabitants for the first time in their lives to appreciate all that they owed to the Mercantile Marine. It was then—and not till then—they reminded themselves that the food supplies, which formed the necessities of life, were brought into the country by a service whose very existence had almost been ignored. Every meal and every food-card, every little inconvenience in regard to hunger, henceforth turned people’s minds back to the prime cause; and those who had been the most ignorant of seafaring matters now began to think in terms of tonnage. From that time the average man and woman and school-child have never ceased to be thankful that we had a marine, whose duty was not to fight, but to keep us supplied with the essentials of existence. Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty recently said that the Mercantile Marine was a branch of that great sea service without which the British Empire would cease to exist. In a normal year, he said, the amount of food supplies forming the necessities of life which are brought into the British Isles and taken out consists of 150,000,000 tons. Without the one service to carry these food supplies, and the Royal Navy to protect the commercial craft on their lawful occasions, the reader can now well imagine how long starvation would be kept away.