I go up and down the country, and I hear what people are saying." Yeovil privately doubted if he ever heard anything but his own opinions.
"It stands to reason," continued the fisherman, "that a highly civilised race like ours, with the record that we've had for leading the whole world, is not going to be held under for long by a lot of damned sausage- eating Germans.

Don't you believe it! I know what I'm talking about.
I've travelled about the world a bit." Yeovil shrewdly suspected that the world travels amounted to nothing more than a trip to the United States and perhaps the Channel Islands, with, possibly, a week or fortnight in Paris.
"It isn't the past we've got to think of, it's the future," said Yeovil.
"Other maritime Powers had pasts to look back on; Spain and Holland, for instance.

The past didn't help them when they let their sea-sovereignty slip from them.

That is a matter of history and not very distant history either." "Ah, that's where you make a mistake," said the other; "our sea-sovereignty hasn't slipped from us, and won't do, neither.

There's the British Empire beyond the seas; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa." He rolled the names round his tongue with obvious relish.
"If it was a list of first-class battleships, and armoured cruisers and destroyers and airships that you were reeling off, there would be some comfort and hope in the situation," said Yeovil; "the loyalty of the colonies is a splendid thing, but it is only pathetically splendid because it can do so little to recover for us what we've lost.