All our ships, with inconsiderable exceptions,
are arriving safely and punctually at their destinations, carrying on
the commerce upon which the wealth and industry and the power of making
war for this country depends. We are transporting easily, not without an
element of danger, but hitherto safely and successfully, great numbers
of soldiers across the seas from all quarters of the world to be
directed upon the decisive theatre of the land struggle. [A voice,
"Russians," and laughter.] And we have searched the so-called German
Ocean without discovering the German flag. [Cheers.] Our enemies, in
their carefully worked out calculations, which they have been toiling
over during a great many years, when the people of this country, as a
whole, credited them with quite different motives, ["Hear, hear!"] have
always counted upon a process of attrition and the waste of shipping by
mines and torpedoes and other methods of warfare of the weaker power, by
which the numbers and strength of our fleet would be reduced to such a
point that they would be able to steel their hearts and come out and
fight. [Cheers.] We have been at war for five or six weeks, and so
far--though I would certainly not underrate the risks and hazards
attending upon warlike operations and the vanity of all
overconfidence--but so far the attrition has been on their side and not
on ours, [cheers,] while the losses which they have suffered greatly
exceed any that we have at present sustained.
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