Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

60 HISTORY OF THE WAR.

political system gave us no guarantee for administrative capacity in our Ministers. They might possess it, but, if so, it was by accident; they had reached their position by being good politicians, by their skill in dealing with words and formulas and not with facts. It was the nation’s business in a life-and-death struggle to make a zealous search for competence, and for this free criticism was essential. Ministers were responsible 7o the nation, and the nation was responsible for Ministers. Failure should be met by dismissal, for the nation was partly to blame. The other way, the old way, when the nation had no responsibility, was to send blundering statesmen to the scaffold. That was the logical culmination of the policy of suppressing criticism and disowning the nation’s partnership. In this atmosphere of unsettlement fell the 110th anniversary of Trafalgar. As in 1805, that day came in the midst of a great war. The name served to recall to men’s minds that at other times in her history Britain had been beset with enemies, and had eventually triumphed. On October 21, 1805, Pitt was within three months of his end. Napoleon, after meditating the invasion of England, was turning east to win the greatest of his victories. Never had the power by land of our adversaries been greater, and it had not yet reached its summit. But Trafalgar was the death-blow to the French Emperor’s hopes of world domination, and, though it took years to finish the war, his cause was lost when on that autumn afternoon the shattered navies of France and Spain fled in the teeth of the rising gale. Trafalgar Day was a reminder, too, of what the British Fleet had