British Admiralty had not been able to hold the Channel against the enemy and ward him off from the coasts and ports of France; if the British ships and British destroyers had not been there to bring over 70 per cent of the American Armies, and food both for ourselves and the Allies; if the sea-routes between us and our Colonies, between us and the East, could not have been maintained, Germany at this moment would have been ruling triumphant over a prostrate world.  The existence and power of the Navy have been as vital to us as the air we breathed and the sun which kept us alive, and the pressure of the British blockade was, perhaps, the dominating element in the victory of the Allies.  But these things are so great and so evident that it seemed in this little book best to take them for granted.  They have been the presuppositions of all the rest.  What has not yet been so clear—­or so I venture to think—­to our own people or our Allies, has been the full glory of the part played by the Armies of the British Empire in the concluding phases of the war.  The temporary success of the German sortie of last spring—­a mere episode in the great whole—­made so deep an impression on the mind of this nation, that the real facts of an annus mirabilis, in their true order and proportion, are only now, perhaps, becoming plain to us.  It was in order to help ever so little in this process that I have tried to tell, as it appears to me, the end of that marvellous story of which I sketched the beginnings in England’s Effort.

These main facts, it seems to me, can hardly be challenged by any future pressure from that vast critical process which the next generation, and generations after, will bring to bear upon the war.  The mistakes made, the blunders here, or shortcomings there, of England’s mighty effort, will be all canvassed and exposed soon enough.  The process indeed has already begun.  And when the first mood of thankful relief from the constant pre-occupation of the war is over, we may expect to see it in full blast.  It would have been easy here to repeat some of the current discontents of the day, all of which will have their legitimate hearing in future discussion.  But this is not the moment, nor is mine the pen.  We are but just emerging from the shadow of that peril from which the British and Imperial Armies—­bone of our bone and flesh or our flesh—­have saved us.  Let us now, if ever, praise the “famous men” of the war, and gather into our hearts the daily efforts, the countless sacrifices of countless thousands, in virtue of which we now live our quiet lives.

Nor have I dwelt much upon the terrible background of the whole scene, the physical horror, the anguish and suffering of war.  Our noblest dead, to judge from the most impassioned and inspired utterances of the men who have suffered for us, would bid us indeed remember these things,—­remember them with all the intensity of which we are capable—­but with few words.  They never counted the cost, though they knew it well; and what they set out to do, they have done.