Sea Warfare

IT I

is acolytes, and they won't tell, has ever seen his face. So with the unconsidered curate. Yet, before the war, he had more experience of the business and detail of death than any of the people who contemned him. His face also, as he stands his bedside-watches-that countenance with which he shall justify himself t

a Lieutenant of one of the destroyers engaged. Among oth

rse," he replied, "but I don't think there co

attleship had blown up or not, saying that, in that particular corner, it would ha

what you take in from outside. This was inside yo

ht produced beyond known endurance form an unknown anaesthetic and stimulant, comparable to

icularly, unless they meant business; but when a lot of big guns loosed off together, the whole se

our destroyers? Some commanders s

ows black in that light. Then it all goes out again w

p D

yers more or less owned by pet dogs, who start life as the chance-f

ent below one time, and wanted to be love

o?" I had heard a go

. She found out pretty soon the bridge was no place for a lady, so she hopped downstairs and got in. You know how she makes three littl

ad to see h

la was the bold,

en nine and eleven an

un run to p

he might cherish a dachshund or so. We never picked up any s

permission to stop and lower dinghy to pick up ship's dog which had fallen overboard. Permission was granted, and the dog was duly rescued. "Lord knows what the Hun made of it," said my informant. "He was rumbling round, dropping bo

Fi

nd fight?" I hinted,

han any other fight, I suppose, but I expect all m

es one feel?" I insisted, th

A man may be right under your nose one minute-serving

tices that

photograph pinned up, or anything of that sort, one notices that. Oh yes, and there was another thing-the way a ship seemed to blow up if you were far off her. You'd see a glare, then a blaze, and then the smoke-miles high, lifting quite slowly. Then you'd get the row and th

Huns' g

ed up again. There was one Hun-boat that got no end of a hammering, and it seemed to do her gunnery good. She improved tremendousl

heard, "Yahun," being a superlative of Yahoo. In the Napoleonic wars we called the Frenc

our Lower Deck

that confirmed this. They had a great deal to do, and they did it serenely because they had been trained to carry on under all conditio

ishments, as in the recorded case of two simple seamen of a destroyer who

e actual Hun losses at

the list, h

hey might have been a shade under-

ne of his business to dispute the drive. If there were any discrepancies between estimate and re

h had stuck in his memory. A soldier-man, related to one of the officers in one of our ships that was put down, had got five days' leave from the trenches which he spent with his relative aboard, and thus dropped in for the whole performance. He had been employed in helping to spot, and had lived up a mast till the ship sank, when he stepped off into the water and swam about till he was fished out and put ashore. By that time, the tale goes, his engine-room-dried khaki had shrunk half-way up his legs and arms

e Admiralty gave yo

except clean down and oil up, and be r

after peace man[oe]uvres, you can realise what has to be done on the heels of an action. And, as there is nothing like housework for the troubled soul of a woman, so a general clean-up is good for sailors. I had this from a petty officer who had als

ilent

what that hour and that weather demanded. It is hard to reach the kernel of Navy minds. The unbribable seas and mechanisms they work on and through have given them the simplicity of elements and machines. The habit of dealing with swift accident, a life of closest and strictest association with their own caste as

eeming contradictions are put forward against his resounding claims; a Naval expert or two is heard talking "off"; the rest is silence. Anon, the enemy, after a prodigious amount of explanation which not even the neutrals seem to take any interest in, revises his claims, and, very modestly, enlarges his losses. Still no sign. After weeks there appears a document giving our version of the affair, which is as colourless, de

, but no words by any outsider can reproduce just that professional tone and touch. A man writing home after the fight, points out that the great consolation for not having cleaned up the enemy altogether was that "anyhow those

f the figures

steer; unable to get out of anybody's way, likely to be rammed by any one of a dozen ships; her syren whimpering: 'Let me through! Make way!'; her crew

; so overwhelmed by revelations of the spirit of men in the basest and most high; that we have neither ti

NE

ow shall it

war is la

proven th

a world

oven that a

ater good I

ased me by

ered for

elivered by

o one s

I hold them,

with ope

not ask me to

ood to endur

y looked to m

ered I kne

d, when the b

th has se

live with myself

have boug

ow must it

am I ju

proven th

mankind

proven th

question

E

R. Clark, Limi