he might (though I am none too sure of it) have been a gentler and a better man. But France was surely worth the price he paid. A lifeboat is not expected to have the graceful lines of a gondola.
"Almost everybody," says Stevenson, "can understand and sympathize with an admiral, or a prize-fighter"; which genial sentiment is less contagious now than when it was uttered, thirty years ago. A new type of admiral has presented itself to the troubled consciousness of men, a type unknown to Nelson, unsuspected by Farragut, unsung by Newbolt. In robbing the word of its ancient glory, Tirpitz has robbed us of an emotion we can ill-afford to lose. "The traditions of sailors," says Mr. Shane Leslie, "have been untouched by the lowering of ideals which has invaded every other class and profession." The truth of his words was brought home to readers by
