[Illustration: JOURNALISTS ON BOARD A MONITOR]
Armageddon was foreseen, though there was hope against hope that, in the great crisis, the dire struggle might be averted. It was known that Belgium and France would have need of England if the dogs of war were let slip. Many soldiers and writers had pointed out that Belgium would become the inevitable pathway of aggression. German writers had declared it an injury that the Congress of Vienna had not established Germany on the North Sea, and Arndt had expressed the ardent desire of the German heart to reconquer the great western rivers, implying the domination of the seas. There were dangers in these lesser countries. They were full of possibilities. _Qui trop embrasse mal étreint._ Belgium would cry aloud for English help. As to Italy, it was difficult to believe that she could hold to her compact with the Central Powers. Russia, it was known, would be against them. Thus in all her naval efforts, long before the war, England, while guarding her own interests, was working and building up her naval strength, in conscious knowledge of the duty she might one day have to her friends who have now become her Allies. This is a very important point, and it leads to a brief survey of great sacrifices and unstinted efforts which Englishmen have made in the past.
The Fleet that went into the war was the most powerful, best organised, and best equipped in every essential particular in the world. Yet, for a very long anterior period, Englishmen had remained unconscious of what they owed to the Fleet. They had fought brilliant campaigns in China, Afghanistan, India, Burma, the Crimea, Abyssinia, and elsewhere, in which the Navy was a most essential factor, though it had scarcely appeared in the public eye. It was therefore from a low ebb that the British Navy rose to the high-water mark of the war. It was not until about the year 1882 that the tide began to turn, driven forward by the lively breeze of a very useful agitation, in which the late Mr. W. T. Stead took a prominent part, and which is believed to have been inspired by the present Lord Fisher and the late Mr. Arnold Forster. A great shipbuilding scheme was put in hand in 1889. Ever since that time, under far-seeing First Lords and First Sea Lords of the Admiralty, the task of asserting British naval supremacy has gone forward. Expenditure on the Navy mounted from £31,000,000 in 1901 to £51,500,000 in 1914, which latter was thought a monstrous figure; but it was not a penny too much for the great interests which had to be safeguarded.