A further source of confidence is the abandonment of all those half-hearted measures which, until lately, characterized the conduct of the war. Under firm and practical leaders the country, alive to its perils, is fortified in the resolve to go forward at all costs to final victory. There is a tightening up all round; no longer are we told that it is a matter of small importance if possible enemy aliens are allowed to swarm in our ports.
The cruel part of our history has always been that thousands of valuable lives have to be wasted before any beed is paid to warnings dictated by common sense. Successive British Governments have failed in the great trust imposed upon them to safeguard an Empire and a freedom maintained by heroic self-sacrifice. As a nation we never seem to learn from the lessons of the past.
As in 1914 our greatest soldiers and statesmen of wide vision have warned us of perils. One hundred years ago the Duke of Wellington was concerned at the apathy prevailing in his time. Mr. Winston Churchill was scoffed at for his ceaseless warnings concerning our inadequacy to deal with attack from the air. The Duke was alarmed at the new threat to our shores when steam replaced sail.
"We hear a great deal of the int of the people of England," he wrote, "for which no man entertains higher respect than I do. But unorganized, undisciplined, without systematic subordination established, this spirit, opposed to the fire of musketry and cannon, and to the sabres and bayonets of disciplined troops, would only expose those animated by such spirit to confusion and destruction." They are words which ring with the same truth now as the day on which they were written.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.