Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/11



At the end of the Great War (1815), it would have been a superfluous task to instruct the people of England as to the meaning of "Maritime Rights" Unfortunately it is no longer so. Sixty years of peace, interrupted only by wars, scarcely one of which can be dignified by the name of a Great War, have blunted the country's perception on this question. But should we ever be again overtaken by a serious war, it will not be long before the sense of what we once possessed and considered our most precious heritage will force itself upon the attention of the nation. It is no uncommon thing now-a-days to find even well educated politicians ignorant of the elementary questions involved in "