The decline and fall of the British Empire - University of Oregon

of the British Empire 53
against Russia .
and
Germany,
England had added such officers
and armed citizens to an adequate
supply of hardy seamen she could
have laughed at defeat. As it was
she was crippled for want of men.*
Her fleet was unable to adopt an
aggressive attitude. It lay en-
circling an Isle of trembling nerve-
ridden townsmen, who had for-
gotten how to play the man for
their hearths and homes.
Happy is the man who calmly
and reverently loves his country, her
smiling pastures and time-clad hills ;
* Compare J. R. Seely's account of reasons
for the fall of the Roman Empire : Roman Im-
** perialism : Whatever the remote and ultimate
cause may have been, the immediate cause to
which the fall of the Empire can be traced is a
physical, not a moral, decay. In valour, discipline,
and science the Roman armies remained
what they had always been, and the peasant
Emperors of Illyricum were worthy successors of
Cincinnatus and Caius Marius. But the problem
was how to replenish these armies. Men were
wanting ; the empire perished for want of men."
Lectures and Essays^ page 52 of Macmillan's
Edition (Eversley Series).