When Louis XIV, in order to check what he perceived to be the
growing supremacy of England upon the seas, determined to
establish a navy, he sent for his great minister Colbert, and
said to him, “I wish a navy--how can I create it?” Colbert
replied, “Make as many galley-slaves as you can.” Thereupon
every Huguenot who refused to doff his bonnet on the street
as the King passed by, every boy of seventeen who could give
no account of himself, every vagrant without an occupation,
was seized, convicted and sent to the galleys. Could a navy of
heroes be made of galley-slaves? The history of the Anglo-Saxon
race says “No.”--HAMPTON L. CARSON.
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