The French in other days were our bitterest enemies, and we were theirs.  We charged each other with abominations only different from what we and our Allies the French are saying about Germany to-day, who was then our ally.  We regarded Germany in the light of a downtrodden nation who was being crushed and mutilated under the relentless heel of the “Corsican Usurper.”  “Such is the rancorous hatred of the French towards us,” says Collingwood in January 1798, “that I do not think they would make peace on any terms, until they have tried this experiment (i.e. the invasion of England) on our country; and never was a country assailed by so formidable a force”; and he goes on to say, “Men of property must come forward both with purse and sword, for the contest must decide whether they shall have anything, even a country which they can call their own.”  This is precisely what we are saying about Germany with greater reason every day at the present time (1918).

It has been the common practice for German submarine commanders to sink at sight British, neutral cargo, and passenger vessels, and hospital ships loaded with wounded troops and nurses.  They have put themselves outside the pale of civilization since they forced the whole world into conflict against them.  Nothing has been too hideous for them to do.  They have blown poor defenceless fishermen to pieces, and bombarded defenceless villages and towns, killing and maiming the inhabitants.

Nelson’s ardent soul must have been wearied with the perversity of the “dead foul winds” (as he described his bitter fate to Ball) that prevented him from piercing the Straits of Gibraltar against the continuous easterly current that runs from the Atlantic and spreads far into the Mediterranean with malicious fluctuations of velocity.  Many a gallant sailing-ship commander has been driven to despair in other days by the friendly levanter failing them just as they were wellnigh through the Gut or had reached the foot of the majestic Rock, when the west wind would assert its power over its feebler adversary, and unless he was in a position to fetch an anchorage behind the Rock or in the bay, their fate was sealed for days, and sometimes weeks, in hard beating to prevent as little ground being lost as possible.  But ofttimes they were drifted as far back as Cape de Gata in spite of daring feats of seamanship in pressing their vessels with canvas until every spar, sail, and rope was overstrained.  A traditional story of sailors of that period was that only a fast clipper schooner engaged in the fruit trade and a line-of-battle ship which fired her lee guns on every tack was ever known to beat through this channel, which mystified the sailors’ ideas of God.  They could not understand how He could have committed such an error in planning the universe which so tried the spirits of His loyal believers!