disposal at the beginning of the War. The truth is that steam and the telegraph have enormously increased, as compared with sailing days, the thoroughness and efficiency of superior sea power. Coaling, communications, and supplies are vital and constant needs, and once the upper hand has been lost they become operations of almost insuperable difficulty to the weaker Navy. Credit is due to our outlying squadrons and to the Admiralty organization by which they have been directed. It must never be forgotten that the situation on every sea, even the most remote, is dominated and decided by the influence of Sir John Jellicoe's Fleet—lost to view amid the northern mists, preserved by patience and seamanship in all its efficiency, silent, unsleeping, and, as yet, unchallenged.
The command of the sea which we have thus enjoyed has not only enabled our trade to be carried on practically without interruption or serious disturbance, but we have been able to move freely about the world very large numbers of troops. The Leader of the Opposition in a speech which he made the other night—I do not at all quarrel with the moderate and temperate tone of his criticism—quoted a letter of a shipowner, in which the word "incapacity" occurred. Of all the words which could be applied to the Admiralty, as applied to the Admiralty Transport Department, no word could be more unsuitable than the word "incapacity." I am going to give the House a figure which has no military significance, because so many uncertain factors are comprised within the total, but which is an absolutely definite figure so far as the work of the Admiralty Transport Department is concerned. We have now moved by sea, at home and abroad, including wounded brought back from the front, including Belgian wounded, including Belgian and French troops, moved here and there as circumstances required, often at the shortest possible notice, with constant changes of plan, across oceans threatened by the enemy's cruisers and across channels haunted by submarines, to and fro from India and Egypt, from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, China, South Africa, from every fortress and Possession under the Crown, approximately one million men without, up to the present, any accident or loss of life. If that is "incapacity," I hope there will be an inexhaustible supply of that quality.
The credit for these arrangements lies very largely with the head of the Admiralty Transport Department, Mr. Graeme Thomson—one of the discoveries of the War, a man who has
