How does it look now?  The situation is still critical and dangerous.  But I recall the half-smiling prophecy of my naval host, in the middle of March, as we stood together on the deck of his ship, looking over his curtseying and newly-hatched flock of destroyers gathered round him in harbour.  Was it not, perhaps, as near the mark as that of our airmen hosts on March 1st has proved itself to be?  “Have patience and you’ll see great things!  The situation is serious, but quite healthy.”  Two months, and a little more, since the words were spoken:—­and week by week, heavy as it still is, the toll of submarine loss is at least kept in check, and your Navy, now at work with ours—­most fitting and welcome Nemesis!—­is helping England to punish and baffle the “uncivilised race,” who, if they had their way, would blacken and defile for ever the old and glorious record of man upon the sea.  You, who store such things in your enviable memory, will recollect how in the Odyssey, that kindly race of singers and wrestlers, the Phaeacians, are the escorts and conveyers of all who need and ask for protection at sea.  They keep the waterways for civilised men, against pirates and assassins, as your nation and ours mean to keep them in the future.  It is true that a treacherous sea-god, jealous of any interference with his right to slay and drown at will, smote the gallant ship that bore Odysseus safely home, on her return, and made a rock of her for ever.  Poseidon may stand for the Kaiser of the story.  He is gone, however, with all his kin!  But the humane and civilising tradition of the sea, which this legend carries back into the dawn of time—­it shall be for the Allies—­shall it not?—­in this war, to rescue it, once and for ever, from the criminal violence which would stain the free paths of ocean with the murder and sudden death of those who have been in all history the objects of men’s compassion and care—­the wounded, the helpless, the woman, and the child.

* * * * *

For the rest, let me gather up a few last threads of this second instalment of our British story.

Of that vast section of the war concerned with the care and transport of the wounded, and the health of the Army, it is not my purpose to speak at length in these Letters.  Like everything else it has been steadily and eagerly perfected during the past year.  Never have the wounded in battle, in any war, been so tenderly and skilfully cared for;—­never have such intelligence and goodwill been applied to the health conditions of such huge masses of men.  Nor is it necessary to dwell again, as I did last year, on the wonderful work of women in the war.  It has grown in complexity and bulk; women-workers in munitions are now nearly a fifth of the whole body; but essentially the general aspect of it has not changed much in the last twelve months.