its life, and which depends even for its daily ration of bread on the
free passage of the seas.

'And we aren't ready for her,' Davies would say; 'we don't look her
way. We have no naval base in the North Sea, and no North Sea Fleet.
Our best battleships are too deep in draught for North Sea work. And,
to crown all, we were asses enough to give her Heligoland, which
commands her North Sea coast. And supposing she collars Holland;
isn't there some talk of that?'

That would lead me to describe the swollen ambitions of the
Pan-Germanic party, and its ceaseless intrigues to promote the
absorption of Austria, Switzerland, and--a direct and flagrant menace
to ourselves--of Holland.

'I don't blame them,' said Davies, who, for all his patriotism, had
not a particle of racial spleen in his composition. 'I don't blame
them; their Rhine ceases to be German just when it begins to be most
valuable. The mouth is Dutch, and would give them magnificent ports
just opposite British shores. We can't talk about conquest and
grabbing. We've collared a fine share of the world, and they've every
right to be jealous. Let them hate us, and say so; it'll teach us to
buck up; and that's what really matters.'

In these talks there occurred a singular contact of minds. It was
very well for me to spin sonorous generalities, but I had never till
now dreamed of being so vulgar as to translate them into practice. I
had always detested the meddlesome alarmist, who veils ignorance
under noisiness, and for ever wails his chant of lugubrious
pessimism. To be thrown with Davies was to receive a shock of