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 with 20s. to 35s. so paid in the early part of the South African War. Hence these complaints, and hence this talk of incapacity in certain quarters. I feel it my duty to defend the Admiralty Transport Department. I must, however, say that the general body of shipowners have loyally met the Government and have been content often and often to charter ships to us at rates very much below the market. The Admiralty is deeply indebted to the ship-owning world in general for all the aid and co-operation which we have received, and we regard the closest union and good will between the Admiralty and the mercantile marine as indispensable at the present time.

I have said that the strain in the early months of the War has been greatly diminished now, by the abatement of distant convoy work, and by the clearance of the enemy's flag from the seas and oceans. There were times when, for instance, the great Australian convoy of sixty ships was crossing the Indian Ocean, or the great Canadian convoy of forty ships, with its protecting squadrons, was crossing the Atlantic, or when the regular flow of large Indian convoys of forty or fifty ships sailing in company was at its height both ways, when there were half a dozen minor expeditions being carried by the Navy, guarded and landed at different points and supplied after landing; when there was a powerful German cruiser squadron still at large in the Pacific or the Atlantic, which had to be watched for and waited for in superior force in six or seven different parts of the world at once, and when, all the time, within a few hours' steam of our shores, there was concentrated a hostile fleet which many have argued in former times was little inferior to our own; and when there was hardly a Regular soldier left at home, and before the Territorial Force and the new Armies had attained their present high efficiency and power—there were times when our naval resources, considerable as they are, were drawn out to their utmost limit, and when we had to use old battleships to give strength to cruiser squadrons, even at the cost of their speed, and when we had to face and to accept risks with which we did not trouble the public, and which no one would willingly seek an opportunity to share.

But the victory at the Falkland Islands swept all these difficulties out of existence. It set free a large force of cruisers and battleships for all purposes; it opened the way to other operations of great interest; it enabled a much stricter control