things. But when a catastrophe of this kind occurred on board a
British merchantman or war vessel the men had both the courage, skill,
training, and, above all, the matchless instinct to clear away the
wreck and carry out the refitting in amazingly short time. That was
because we were then, and are now under new conditions, an essentially
seafaring race. And it was this superiority that gave Nelson such
great advantages over the French commanders and their officers and
seamen, though it must be admitted they were fast drilled by the force
of circumstances into foes that were not to be looked upon too
lightly.

The elusive tactics of the French admirals then were in a lesser
degree similar to those practised by the Germans now, if it be proper
to speak or think of the two services at the same time without
libelling them. The French were always clean fighters, however much
they may have been despised by Nelson. They were never guilty of
cowardly revenge. They would not then, or now, send hospital ships to
the bottom with their crews and their human cargoes of wounded
soldiers and nurses. Nor would they indiscriminately sink merchant
vessels loaded with civilian passengers composed of men, women, and
children, and leave them to drown, as is the inhuman practice of the
German submarine crews of to-day.

The French in other days were our bitterest enemies, and we were
theirs. We charged each other with abominations only different from
what we and our Allies the French are saying about Germany to-day, who
was then our ally. We regarded Germany in the light of a downtrodden
nation who was being crushed and mutilated under the relentless heel
of the "Corsican Usurper." "Such is the rancorous hatred of the French
towards us," says Collingwood in January 1798, "that I do not think