Merchant Service. In this name I include men of diverse status and origin, who live on and by the sea, by it exclusively, outside all professional pretensions and social formulas, men for whom not only their daily bread but their collective character, their personal achievement, and their individual merit come from the sea. Those words of the statesman were meant kindly; but, after all, this is not a complete excuse. Rightly or wrongly, we expect from a man of national import ance a larger, at the same time a more scrupulous precision of speech, for it is possible that it may go echoing down the ages. His words were It is right when thinking of the Navy not to forget the men Of the Merchant Service.