“‘Says he’s goin’ down, sir,”
the signaller replies. What the submarine had
spelt out, and everybody knows it, was: “Cannot
approve of this extremely frightful weather.
Am going to bye-bye.”
“Well!” snaps the lieutenant to his signaller,
“what are you grinning at?” The submarine
has hung on to ask if the destroyer will “kiss
her and whisper good-night.” A breaking
sea smacks her tower in the middle of the insult.
She closes like an oyster, but—just too
late. Habet! There must be a quarter of a ton
of water somewhere down below, on its way to her ticklish
batteries.
“What a wag!” says the signaller, dreamily.
“Well, ’e can’t say ’e didn’t
get ’is little kiss.”
The lieutenant in command smiles. The sea is
a beast, but a just beast.
This is trivial enough, but what would you have?
If Admirals will not strike the proper attitudes,
nor Lieutenants emit the appropriate sentiments, one
is forced back on the truth, which is that the men
at the heart of the great matters in our Empire are,
mostly, of an even simplicity. From the advertising
point of view they are stupid, but the breed has always
been stupid in this department. It may be due,
as our enemies assert, to our racial snobbery, or,
as others hold, to a certain God-given lack of imagination
which saves us from being over-concerned at the effects
of our appearances on others. Either way, it
deceives the enemies’ people more than any calculated
lie. When you come to think of it, though the
English are the worst paper-work and viva voce
liars in the world, they have been rigorously trained
since their early youth to live and act lies for the
comfort of the society in which they move, and so for
their own comfort. The result in this war is
interesting.
It is no lie that at the present moment we hold all
the seas in the hollow of our hands. For that
reason we shuffle over them shame-faced and apologetic,
making arrangements here and flagrant compromises
there, in order to give substance to the lie that we
have dropped fortuitously into this high seat and
are looking round the world for some one to resign
it to. Nor is it any lie that, had we used the
Navy’s bare fist instead of its gloved hand from
the beginning, we could in all likelihood have shortened
the war. That being so, we elected to dab and
peck at and half-strangle the enemy, to let him go
and choke him again. It is no lie that we continue
on our inexplicable path animated, we will try to
believe till other proof is given, by a cloudy idea
of alleviating or mitigating something for somebody—not
ourselves. [Here, of course, is where our racial snobbery
comes in, which makes the German gibber. I cannot
understand why he has not accused us to our Allies
of having secret commercial understandings with him.]
For that reason, we shall finish the German eagle as
the merciful lady killed the chicken. It took
her the whole afternoon, and then, you will remember,
the carcase had to be thrown away.
