_West of Corfu, 26 November._ The naval struggle in which the Germans pretended to imitate the great corsairs of France has ended with the destruction of the _Emden_ by an Australian cruiser in the Bay of Bengal. The armed liners--the _Kaiser Wilhelm_, _Cecilie_, _Cape Trafalgar_, and many others--have already paid the penalty for their futile audacity. They thought they could terrorize sailors and starve out nations; but in fact the resources of life are going to flow more abundantly than ever into the markets of the Allies. The navy is the guardian of the granaries. We already knew it who frequented the important routes in times of peace, but five months of labor have proved to us that we never realized its full significance. We have seen pass us, and have protected, innumerable freighters loaded with grain for bread, with animals for meat, and steel for the manufacture of shells. The warships have freed the routes which supply our champions with food, and have closed up the routes of the enemy. How many months longer will this enterprise take? The lips of the future are sealed. But the cruisers and torpedo-boats, from Norway to the Ægean Sea, do not shrink from their task. A nation at war requires some of its defenders to labor in assuring a living to those who fight. The deeds of sailors are not brilliant and showy; and men are not grateful to them for their fatigue. What matter? If this obscure work of the ships keeps the tears of famine from being added to the grief of mourning, it will not have been without a glory of its own; the smiles of happy little children will be our reward. But I am forgetting the _Emden_ and the corsair liners. Like the sea my imagination is somewhat capricious. These restless corsairs are of a piece with the general parody which German Kultur offers us. What would the Jean Barts and the Duquesnes say to the bandits that are spewed forth from Kiel and Hamburg? In the great period of Dunkirk and Saint Malo, pirates attacked magnificent galleys, sailing before the wind to Spain and the Thames. Like the brave foxes they were, they reveled in bold and clever combat. They were the prodigal sons of the sea. They played an honorable game, and never took pride in mere blind massacre. One can imagine how the terrors of the sea would have been increased if a few years more of peace had permitted Germany to forge new weapons. Of her liners and cruisers she has picked the most powerful and rapid, and has said to them: “Kill, sink, and fun away!” Nothing is sacred to the barbarians of Rheims and Louvain, neither cathedrals nor the routes of the sea. What would not have been the horrors of this privateering war if William II himself or one of his lieutenants had had control of these maritime massacres? Before them the grisly imagination of the Middle Ages would have paled. What crimes will the Germans not commit when they realize that they are conquered?