c
Squadron. Indeed, you were always hearing about Jellicoe in those
days on the China coast. He was the kind of man whom people talk
about after they have met him, which means personality. It was in
China seas, you may remember, that when a few British seamen
were hard pressed in a fight that was not ours the phrase, "Blood is
thicker than water," sprang from the lips of an American commander,
who waited not on international etiquette but went to the assistance of
the British.

Nor will anyone who was present in the summer of '98 forget how Sir
Edward Chichester stood loyally by Admiral George Dewey, when the
German squadron was empire-fishing in the waters of Manila Bay,
until our Atlantic fleet had won the battle of Santiago and Admiral
Dewey had received reinforcements and, east and west, we were
able to look after the Germans. The British bluejackets said that the
rations of frozen mutton from Australia which we sent alongside were
excellent; but the Germans were in no position to judge, doubtless
through an oversight in the detail of hospitality by one of Admiral
Dewey's staff. Let us be officially correct and say there was no mutton
to spare after the British had been supplied.

In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to relieve the
legations against some hundreds of thousands of Boxers, Captain
Bowman McCalla and his Americans worked with Admiral Seymour
and his Britons in the most trying and picturesque adventure of its
kind in modern history. McCalla, too, was always talking of Jellicoe,
who was wounded on the expedition; and Sir John's face lighted at
mention of McCalla's name. He recalled how McCalla had painted
on the superstructure of the little Newark that saying of Farragut's,
"The best protection against an enemy's fire is a well-directed fire
of your own"; which has been said in other ways and cannot be
said too often.

"We called McCalla Mr. Lead," said Sir John; "he had been wounded
so many times and yet was able to hobble along and keep on
fighting. We corresponded regularly until his death."

Beatty, too, was on that expedition; and he, too, was another
personality one kept hearing about. It seemed odd that two men who
had played a part in work which was a soldier's far from home should
have become so conspicuous in the Great War. If on that day when,
with ammunition exhausted, all members of the expedition had given
up hope of ever returning alive, they had not accidentally come