in the pressed man's lot mounted up, just in that proportion did his
opposition to the power that sought to take him become the more
determined, strenuous, and undisguised.

Particularly was this true of warlike operations upon the sea, for to
the extraordinary and terrible risks of war were here added the
ordinary but ever-present dangers of wind and wave and storm,
sufficient in themselves to appal the unaccustomed and to antagonise
the unwilling. In face of these superlative risks the difficulty of
procuring men was accentuated a thousand-fold, and with it both the
nature and the degree of the coercive force necessary to be exercised
for their procuration.

In these circumstances the Ruling Power had no option but to resort to
more exigent means of attaining its end. In times of peace, working
through myriad hands, it had constructed a thousand monuments of
ornamental or utilitarian industry. These, with the commonweal they
represented, were now threatened and must be protected at all costs.
What more reasonable than to demand of those who had built, or of
their successors in the perpetual inheritance of toil, that they
should protect what they had reared. Hitherto, in most cases, the men
required to meet the national need had submitted at a threat. They had
to live, and coercive toil meant at least a living wage. Now, made
rebellious by a fearful looking forward to the risks they were called
upon to incur, they had to be met by more effective measures. Faced by
this emergency, Power did not mince matters. It laid violent hands
upon the unwilling subject and forced him, _nolens volens_, to
sail its ships, to man its guns, and to fight its battles by sea as he
already, under less overt compulsion, did its bidding by land.