and noble spirit of self-sacrifice lead them to persevere in their
perilous work and enable a thousand ships to reach port to one that
goes down.

On that rough voyage across the North Sea, through the destroyer
and armed motor launch patrol, maintained by men who work
unflinchingly in the shadow of death, I felt once again the power
of the British Navy. I cast my lot with that Navy when I left
Holland. I know what its protection means, for I could not have
crossed on a neutral Dutch vessel.

It is all very well to complain about a few raiders that manage in
thirty months to pierce the British patrols, or the hurried dash of
swift destroyers into the Channel, but when you look from the white
chalk cliffs of the Kentish coast at hundreds of vessels passing
safely off the Downs, when you sail the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean and see only neutral and Allied ships carrying on
commerce, when you cross the Rhine and stand in food lines hour
after hour and day after day, where men and women who gloried in
war now whine at the hardships it brings, when you see a mighty
nation disintegrating in the shadow of starvation, and then pass to
another nation, which, though far less self-sustaining in food, has
plenty to eat, you simply have to realise that there are silent
victories which are often farther reaching than victories of
_eclat_.




CHAPTER XXVIII