fts with their hands
around the sinking ship at two in the morning.

That is youth; and there is no beating youth. We have had stories of our
soldiers singing a song that has become very popular since we entered
the war. We have been told of them singing it under the most varying
conditions: as they camped on the granite blocks of the Hoboken
water-front; as they climbed over the gangways of ships bound across;
debarking from ships in European ports; singing it from behind the drawn
shades of coaches rolling across France. There were even those who sang
it while waiting to step into the life-boats on a torpedoed troop-ship;
but for light-hearted courage has any one beaten that destroyer lad who
was torpedoed one night last winter?

When the torpedo struck his ship the two depth charges astern were
exploded also. Two 300-pound charges of T N T they were. The little ship
seemed to be lifted out of the water. There was just time to throw over
a few life rafts and take a high dive after the rafts. There was no time
to get an S O S message away before the ship went down; so there they
were--a November night in northern waters, more than half their crew
known to be dead, their ship sunk, no other ship near and no hope of one
coming near. It was about as tough a case as men could be expected to
face and hope to live. But there was a boy there--he was jouncing up and
down in the water to keep warm, and jouncing up and down he was singing
(from out of the dark they heard him), singing cheerfully:

"O boy, O boy, where do we go from here!"

It is the thing spoken of in the early part of this book. Material is a
great thing; but personnel has it beaten a dozen ways. Paul Jones with
his capable seagoers in his little sloop-of-war could raise the devil
with the enemy. Paul Jones with a line of battleships and forty crews of
men without spirit would not have caused them ten minutes' loss of
sleep. That singing lad in northern waters was worth a dozen guns.

Our destroyers went over there at a time when the U-boats were sinking
more tonnage in one month than Great Britain was building in four; and
because of U-boat activities the loss of ships in the usual marine ways
was far beyond normal. To the weary British our fellows brought a fresh
vigor, a new aggressiveness.

Only half a dozen were in that first group, but other groups followed,
and groups are still following. They have not driven the U-boats from
under the seas, b