That flag, which but for the Union Jack in the corner might have been adopted by the most radical of revolutions, affirmed in its numbers the stability of purpose, the continuity of effort and the greatness of Britain’s opportunity pursued steadily in the order and peace of the world:  that world which for twenty-five years or so after 1870 may be said to have been living in holy calm and hushed silence with only now and then a slight clink of metal, as if in some distant part of mankind’s habitation some restless body had stumbled over a heap of old armour.

II.

We who have learned by now what a world-war is like may be excused for considering the disturbances of that period as insignificant brawls, mere hole-and-corner scuffles.  In the world, which memory depicts as so wonderfully tranquil all over, it was the sea yet that was the safest place.  And the Red Ensign, commercial, industrial, historic, pervaded the sea!  Assertive only by its numbers, highly significant, and, under its character of a trade—­emblem, nationally expressive, it was symbolic of old and new ideas, of conservatism and progress, of routine and enterprise, of drudgery and adventure—­and of a certain easy-going optimism that would have appeared the Father of Sloth itself if it had not been so stubbornly, so everlastingly active.

The unimaginative, hard-working men, great and small, who served this flag afloat and ashore, nursed dumbly a mysterious sense of its greatness.  It sheltered magnificently their vagabond labours under the sleepless eye of the sun.  It held up the Edifice.  But it crowned it too.  This is not the extravagance of a mixed metaphor.  It is the sober expression of a not very complex truth.  Within that double function the national life that flag represented so well went on in safety, assured of its daily crust of bread for which we all pray and without which we would have to give up faith, hope and charity, the intellectual conquests of our minds and the sanctified strength of our labouring arms.  I may permit myself to speak of it in these terms because as a matter of fact it was on that very symbol that I had founded my life and (as I have said elsewhere in a moment of outspoken gratitude) had known for many years no other roof above my head.

In those days that symbol was not particularly regarded.  Superficially and definitely it represented but one of the forms of national activity rather remote from the close-knit organisations of other industries, a kind of toil not immediately under the public eye.  It was of its Navy that the nation, looking out of the windows of its world-wide Edifice, was proudly aware.  And that was but fair.  The Navy is the armed man at the gate.  An existence depending upon the sea must be guarded with a jealous, sleepless vigilance, for the sea is but a fickle friend.