In some cases the Government fixes the ports of call and lays down the commodities which the ships shall carry, but in most cases trading routes for the ships are left to the discretion of the shipowners, the Government merely directing which commodities are essential and what quantities of these are to be carried to England or to the Empire or to allied countries and other spheres in "which Great Britain is interested.
The complexity of this organization will be realised when it is considered how much of our supplies we draw from the ends of the world, to which we must send our ships to fetch them. From the Argentine comes beef and wheat; from Australia the same products and wool; from New Zealand butter, mutton and wool; from Chile nitrates; from the United States of America the armaments of which we hear se much and for which we are so grateful; from Canada more foodstuffs and armaments; from the Sudan and the United States cotton; from the Straits and Netherlands ast Indies tin, rubber and copra; from China eggs, silk, tungsten and hides, and from Japan canned salmon, silk and plywood.
I have said enough to show that as these ships go about the world, carrying that which we have to sell, and bringing back to England those things which England needs, they are really units in and symbols of the vast and intricate organization of war.
Let us now consider the ship itself and those aboard her. If she is an Ocean-going vessel she does not look the same ship now that we knew in peace time. Her gaily painted funnel has become dull black or grey, her name has disappeared, she flies no house flag or ensign at sea. She has been driven hard for the last year and has had little time te spend in docking or painting. She has one or two guns pointing out over her stern and up into the air and she is, in fact, no longer a product of financial faith engaged in the adventure of commerce, but is the instrument of a nation at war. Yet those on board her are the same people and have exactly the same duties as in peace time, but with other duties and anxieties added. I cannot hope to give you a full chronicle of these duties and anxieties: they are the seaman's affair, and about such matters the merchant seaman, like his naval brother, is slent. We can, however, make some kind of a guess as to the background which hangs around the life of the merchant seaman during wer and against which he must carry on his normal duties of running his ship. First, he must face the dangers of mines, of bombs from the air, of surface raiders, of Under sea raiders and of sabotage; these are the dangers from enemy action. Next he must face the increase in the ordinary perils of the sea due to lighthouses being blacked out, light ships being put out of action by enemy bombing, and other ships carrying no navigating lights, as is the rule in war time.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.