The subject is too painful for us to dwell on

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 187.

It took at least forty days for news of each of the British defeats to reach London, the delay only adding to the sense of unreality and stunned disbelief that each left in its wake. British commentators found themselves literally at a loss for words, or at least rational words, to explain how the world could have been turned so upside down. “Another frigate has fallen into the hands of the enemy!—The subject is too painful for us to dwell on,” was all that the editors of the Naval Chronicle could at first find to say at the news of the Java’s defeat. The Times found it simply incredible that such things could be: “The public will learn, with sentiments which we shall not presume to anticipate that a third British frigate has struck to an American.” The news came atop a report that Lloyd’s had just listed five hundred British merchantmen captured by the Americans in the first seven months of the war:

Five hundred merchantmen, and three frigates! Can these statements be true; and can the English people hear them unmoved? Any one who had predicted such a result of an American war, this time last year, would have been treated as a madman or a traitor. He would have been told, if his opponents had condescended to argue with him, that long ere seven months had elapsed, the American flag would be swept from the seas, the contemptible navy of the United States annihilated, and their maritime arsenals rendered a heap of ruins. Yet down to this moment, not a single American frigate has struck her flag. They insult and laugh at our want of enterprise and vigour. They leave their ports when they please, and return to them when it suits their convenience; they traverse the Atlantic; they beset the West India Islands; they advance to the very chops of the Channel; they parade along the coasts of South America; nothing chases, nothing intercepts, nothing engages them but to yield triumph.

Many British commentators noted that one, or even three, frigates amounted to a trivial material loss to the Royal Navy. But the symbolic consequences were positively incalculable. “It is not merely that an English frigate has been taken,” the Times averred after the very first British defeat, “but that it has been taken by a new enemy, an enemy unaccustomed to such triumphs, and likely to be rendered insolent and confident by them. He must be a weak politician, who does not see how important the first triumph is in giving a tone and character to the war.” And to Britain’s aura of invincibility throughout the world: “We have suffered ourselves to be beaten in detail by a Power that we should not have allowed to send a vessel to sea,” the Times added as the losses mounted. “The land-spell of the French is broken; and so is our sea-spell”; just a few more years like this would “render our vaunted navy the laughing-stock of the universe.” Above all, it was now essential that no effort should be spared to achieve the one essential object, “the entire annihilation of the American navy.”