XLIX.
This the navy of the Twenty Years' War knew well how to do, and
never better than when Lord Nelson had breathed into its soul his
own passion of honour and fame. It was a fortunate navy. Its
victories were no mere smashing of helpless ships and massacres of
cowed men. It was spared that cruel favour, for which no brave
heart had ever prayed. It was fortunate in its adversaries. I say
adversaries, for on recalling such proud memories we should avoid
the word "enemies," whose hostile sound perpetuates the antagonisms
and strife of nations, so irremediable perhaps, so fateful--and
also so vain. War is one of the gifts of life; but, alas! no war
appears so very necessary when time has laid its soothing hand upon
the passionate misunderstandings and the passionate desires of
great peoples. "Le temps," as a distinguished Frenchman has said,
"est un galant homme." He fosters the spirit of concord and
justice, in whose work there is as much glory to be reaped as in
the deeds of arms.
One of them disorganized by revolutionary changes, the other rusted
in the neglect of a decayed monarchy, the two fleets opposed to us
entered the contest with odds against them from the first. By the
merit of our daring and our faithfulness, and the genius of a great
leader, we have in the course of the war augmented our advantage
and kept it to the last. But in the exulting illusion of
irresistible might a long series of military successes brings to a
nation the less obvious aspect of such a fortune may perchance be
lost to view. The old navy in its last days earned a fame that no
belittling malevolence dare cavil at. And this supreme favour they
owe to their adversaries alone.
Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence which
strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill but not
in courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries managed yet
to make a better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793. Later
still, the resistance offered at the Nile was all, and more than
all, that could be demanded from seamen, who, unless blind or
without understanding, must have seen their doom sealed from the
moment that the Goliath, bearing up under the bows of the Guerrier,
took up an inshore berth. The combined fleets of 1805, just come
out of port, and attended by nothing but the disturbing memories of
reverses, presented to our approach a determined front, on which
Captain Blackwood, in a knightly spirit, congratulated his Admiral.
By the exertions of their valour our adversaries have but added a
greater lustre to our arms. No friend could have done more, for
even in war, which severs for a time all the sentiments of human
fellowship, this subtle bond of association remains between brave
men--that the final testimony to the value of victory must be
received at the hands of the vanquished.
Those who from the heat of that battle sank together to their
repose in the cool depths of the ocean would not understand the
watchwords of our day, would gaze with amazed eyes at the engines
of our strife. All passes, all changes: the animosity of peoples,
the handling of fleets, the forms of ships; and even the sea itself
seems to wear a different and diminished aspect from the sea of
Lord Nelson's day. In this ceaseless rush of shadows and shades,
that, like the fantastic forms of clouds cast darkly upon the
waters on a windy day, fly past us to fall headlong below the hard
edge of an implacable horizon, we must turn to the national spirit,
which, superior in its force and continuity to good and evil
fortune, can alone give us the feeling of an enduring existence and
of an invincible power against the fates.
Like a subtle and mysterious elixir poured into the perishable clay
of successive generations, it grows in truth, splendour, and
potency with the march of ages. In its incorruptible flow all
round the globe of the earth it preserves from the decay and
forgetfulness of death the greatness of our great men, and amongst
them the passionate and gentle greatness of Nelson, the nature of
whose genius was, on the faith of a brave seaman and distinguished
Admiral, such as to "Exalt the glory of our nation."
