e true to the character of the
nation by and large that is all the nation may expect; if they are better,
then the nation has reason to be grateful. Englishmen take more
interest in their navy than Americans in theirs. They give it the best
that is in them and they expect the best from it in return. Every
youngster who hopes to be an officer knows that the navy is no place
for idling; every man who enlists knows that he is in for no junket on a
pleasure yacht. The British navy, I judged, had a relatively large
percentage of the brains and application of England.

"It is not so different from what it was for ten years preceding the
war," said one of the officers. "We did all the work we could stand
then; and whether cruising or lying in harbour, life is almost normal for
us to-day."

The British fleet was always on a war footing. It must be. Lack
of naval preparedness is more dangerous than lack of land
preparedness. It is fatal. I know of officers who had had only a week's
leave in a year in time of peace; their pay is less than our officers'.
Patriotism kept them up to the mark.

And another thing: once a sailor, always a sailor, is an old saying; but
it has a new application in modern navies. They become fascinated
with the very drudgery of ship existence. They like their world, which
is their house and their shop. It has the attraction of a world of
priestcraft, with them alone understanding the ritual. Their drill at the
guns becomes the preparation for the great sport of target practice,
which beats any big-game shooting when guns compete with guns,
with battle practice greater sport than target practice. Bringing a ship
into harbour well, holding her to her place in the formation, roaming
over the seas in a destroyer--all means eternal effort at the mastery
of material, with the results positively demonstrated.

On one of the Dreadnoughts I saw a gun's crew drilling with a dummy
six-inch; weight, one hundred pounds.

"Isn't that boy pretty young to handle that big shell?" an admiral asked
a junior officer.

"He doesn't think so," the officer replied. "We haven't anyone who
could handle it better. It would break his heart if we changed his
position."

Not one of fifty German prisoners whom I had seen filing by over in
France was as sturdy as this youngster. In the ranks of an infantry
company of any army he would have been above the average of
physique; but among the rest of the gun's crew he did appear sl