Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER, 1, 1934 ENGLISH LUCK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 1 September 1934, Page 6

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER, 1, 1934 ENGLISH LUCK

THE heading “English Luck” is used because there is such a thing. It would bo pleasant t'o write of Irish luck, but the fact is that Ireland’s luck seeins to bo “out.” As for Scotch luck, it will bo agreed by those who know him best that according to tradition the Scotchman does not need luck —ho leaves nothing to chance—lie makes certain every time. But with the English it is different. They take chances, not in a gambling sense, but in accordance with the principle that life,, if uncertain, is full of opportunities, and the Englishman is out to seek them; and where they do not exist, he does his best to create them. His history proves that. England’s good luck began with the Tudors: if anyone questions that, let him read the history of the grim Plantagenets who preceded them. But, under tho Tudors, England’s luck changed, and under Elizabeth it shone like the sun appearing from behind a bank of clouds. Let the doubter read tho story of the defeat of the Spanish Armada with an open mind, and if he is not convinced that “the stars in their courses” fought against (Spain and on the side of the English, there is no truth in history. But when the Tudors vanished, England’s luck vanished —for a season, The crabbed James, the foolish Charles and his careless sons (James and Charles again) nearly wrecked England between them, and it was left to a foreigner, a Dutchman, William of Orange, tb put the country again on its feet, and win it respect in the civilised world. It was a piece of good luck that England had Elizabeth as a Queen when the danger of Spanish invasion threatened: not that “Good Queen Bess” did everything personally, but that she knew how to en- j courage her gallant subjects to great I achievements A hundred years later Queen Anne acted in much the same manner. When France threatened to subdue the Lowlands and subsequently England, Anne very wisely left the great Marlborough to deal with the situation, and so effectively did he act that the power of France, if it was not actually broken, was rendered ineffectual to menace Europe and England for nearly a hundred years. When Anne, the last of the Stuart sovereigns, died, England had to fall back on tho Hanoverian Georges j —the Scottish Jacobite gibe will bo re- 1 mernbered: “Wlia the de’jl we gotten | for a king, but a wee, wee German lair- 1 die!”--but tho man who wrote that did not foresee that tho coming j of George I was an earnest of j England’s good luck which has lasted for

more than two centuries till the present time. Indeed, from the time of Anne onwards, it looked as if England could not go wrong, so uniform seemed her good luck. When the star of Napoleon lose above the horizon, France was in a state of chaos through the Revolution. With his genius for judging how to make the most of a situation, whether military or political, he quickly made himself Dictator and then Emperor of the French nation, and was free to follow his career of conquest. His success was phenomenal. He conquered Italy, Austria, Germany (including Prussia), and overran Spain and Portugal with the assistance of his wonderful Marshals and the armies which they commanded. He held the greater part of the European Continent in a state of vassalage. Only in the Spanish Peninsula, where he was attacked by the British, did his ‘ star forsake him. He sent the best of his Marshals against Wellington, but they were defeated one after another. At sea Napoleon had no luck. His expedition against Egypt was a tragic failure —his Mediterranean fleet was destroyed by Nelson at Aboukir Bay: and what remained of his naval power was destroyed by the great English admiral-at Trafalgar. Moreover, his seafaring allies, the Dutch and the Danes, were signally dejfeated, the one at Camperdown and the other at Copenhagen. The final catas trophe was to come when Napoleon “measured himself with Wellington” on the field of Waterloo, where the power of Franco was decisively broken, and her Emperor’s career was definitely ended. On the sea —Nelson; on the land Wellington; both were peerless in their respective spheres. Who will question the good fortune of the British people in having two such supermen to defend their interests in the face of the Corsican adventurer who had placed all Europe, save Britain and Russia, under his feet? There are historians and publicists who have traced England’s political and commercial greatness to her triumph in that titanio struggle, in wliich France was so signally worsted. It is an undoubted fact that when the exhausting effects of the Napoleonic wars had been overcome, the English emerged as the greatest industrial nation in Europe, and in the world ! England’s phenomenal good fortune In the strenuous years of war adhered to her in tho happy times of peace. Under Victoria, England became the emporium of the civilised world. To and from her shores her mercantile fleets traded freely and profitably for threequarters of a century, without let or hindrance. It remained for Victoria’s grandson, the Kaiser, to challenge Britain’s industrial and commercial supremacy with his execrable submarine' policy —‘‘sink without trace”—wliich killed the chivalry of the sea, and eternally disgraced the, German navy. But sore though was the trial, there never was any doubt as to the ultimate decision. Victory crowned a Britannia who was war-weary and impoverished, but fortified with a courage as great, in the maelstrom of economic difficulty, as It had been in war. She struggled heroically and successfully to restore her industrial and commercial prosperity. Peiy Imps it may be argued that this double athievement was not attributable so much to good fortune as to brave and strenuous endeavour. Perhaps that was so, but it was the Germans whose luck was ‘‘out,” and in the commercial and industrial resurgence Great Britain had tho support of tfie Empire, whoso markets formed the basis on which she could rebuild her trade with the world at large. Tlie history of the Empire is one long record of good luck —in India, in Canada, in South Africa, in Australia, and in New Zealand—of good luck, supported by hard work, by a spirit of enterprise, and tho expenditure of no small amount of money. The salient characteristics of the English race—courage, love of adventure, foresight, and the capacity for taking risks, which are necessarily components in successful Empire-building—-those are some of the qualities which have done so much to make England great, and will maintain that greatness while they remain unimpaired. Such, then, is the brief record of England’s good luck. But who shall say how much of it is to be attributed to the amazing courage of her people?