ps were going hard. We fixed our eyes on
marks about the water line to see if the sea was gaining upon them or
not. She was very much down by the bows, that was a sure thing. Crew and
stokers were in a mass standing strictly at attention on the main deck.
A whole bevy of destroyers crowded round the wounded warrior. In the
sight of all those men standing still, silent, orderly in their ranks,
facing the imminence of death, I got my answer to the hasty moralizings
about war, drawn from me (really) by a regret that I would very soon be
drowned. On the deck of that battleship staggering along at a stone's
throw was a vindication of war in itself; of war, the state of being,
quite apart from war motives or gains. Ten thousand years of peace would
fail to produce a spectacle of so great virtue. Where, in peace,
passengers have also shown high constancy, it is because war and martial
discipline have lent them its standards. Once in a generation a
mysterious wish for war passes through the people. Their instinct tells
them that _there is no other way_ of progress and of escape from habits
that no longer fit them. Whole generations of statesmen will fumble over
reforms for a lifetime which are put into full-blooded execution within
a week of a declaration of war. There is _no other way_. Only by intense
sufferings can the nations grow, just as the snake once a year must with
anguish slough off the once beautiful coat which has now become a strait
jacket.

How was it going to end? How touching the devotion of all these small
satellites so anxiously forming escort? Onwards, at snail's pace, moved
our cortege which might at any moment be transformed into a funeral
affair, but slow as we went we yet went fast enough to give the go-by
to the French battleship _Gaulois_, also creeping out towards Tenedos in
a lamentable manner attended by another crowd of T.B.s and destroyers
eager to stand to and save.

The _Inflexible_ managed to crawl into Tenedos under her own steam but
we stood by until we saw the _Gaulois_ ground on some rocks called
Rabbit Island, when I decided to clear right out so as not to be in the
way of the Navy at a time of so much stress. After we had gone ten miles
or so, the _Phaeton_ intercepted a wireless from the _Queen Elizabeth_,
ordering the _Ocean_ to take the _Irresistible_ in tow, from which it
would appear that she (the _Irresistible_) has also met with some
misfortune.

Thank God we were in time! That