Such was my first view of the Elbe approached under the wings of peace
ready for flight away from the luckless shores of Europe. Our visual
impressions remain with us so persistently that I find it extremely
difficult to hold fast to the rational belief that now everything is dark
over there, that the Elbe lightship has been towed away from its post of
duty, the triumphant beam of Heligoland extinguished, and the pilot-boat
laid up, or turned to warlike uses for lack of its proper work to do. And
obviously it must be so.

Any trickle of oversea trade that passes yet that way must be creeping
along cautiously with the unlighted, war-blighted black coast close on
one hand, and sudden death on the other. For all the space we steamed
through that Sunday evening must now be one great minefield, sown thickly
with the seeds of hate; while submarines steal out to sea, over the very
spot perhaps where the insect-dinghy put a pilot on board of us with so
much fussy importance. Mines; Submarines. The last word in sea-warfare!
Progress--impressively disclosed by this war.

There have been other wars! Wars not inferior in the greatness of the
stake and in the fierce animosity of feelings. During that one which was
finished a hundred years ago it happened that while the English Fleet was
keeping watch on Brest, an American, perhaps Fulton himself, offered to
the Maritime Prefect of the port and to the French Admiral, an invention
which would sink all the unsuspecting English ships one after another--or,
at any rate most of them. The offer was not even taken into
consideration; and the Prefect ends his report to the Minister in Paris
with a fine phrase of indignation: "It is not the sort of death one would
deal to brave men."