put forward against his resounding claims; a Naval
expert or two is heard talking “off”; the
rest is silence. Anon, the enemy, after a prodigious
amount of explanation which not even the neutrals
seem to take any interest in, revises his claims,
and, very modestly, enlarges his losses. Still
no sign. After weeks there appears a document
giving our version of the affair, which is as colourless,
detached, and scrupulously impartial as the findings
of a prize-court. It opines that the list of enemy
losses which it submits “give the minimum in
regard to numbers though it is possibly not entirely
accurate in regard to the particular class of vessel,
especially those that were sunk during the night attacks.”
Here the matter rests and remains—just like
our blockade. There is an insolence about it
all that makes one gasp.
Yet that insolence springs naturally and unconsciously
as an oath, out of the same spirit that caused the
destroyer to pick up the dog. The reports themselves,
and tenfold more the stories not in the reports, are
charged with it, but no words by any outsider can reproduce
just that professional tone and touch. A man
writing home after the fight, points out that the
great consolation for not having cleaned up the enemy
altogether was that “anyhow those East Coast
devils”—a fellow-squadron, if you
please, which up till Jutland had had most of the
fighting—“were not there. They
missed that show. We were as cock-ahoop as a
girl who had been to a dance that her sister has missed.”
This was one of the figures in that dance:
“A little British destroyer, her midships rent
by a great shell meant for a battle-cruiser; exuding
steam from every pore; able to go ahead but not to
steer; unable to get out of anybody’s way, likely
to be rammed by any one of a dozen ships; her syren
whimpering: ’Let me through! Make
way!’; her crew fallen in aft dressed in life-belts
ready for her final plunge, and cheering wildly as
it might have been an enthusiastic crowd when the
King passes.”
Let us close on that note. We have been compassed
about so long and so blindingly by wonders and miracles;
so overwhelmed by revelations of the spirit of men
in the basest and most high; that we have neither
time to keep tally of these furious days, nor mind
to discern upon which hour of them our world’s
fate hung.
Brethren, how shall it fare
with me
When the war is
laid aside,
If it be proven that I am
he
For whom a world
has died?
If it be proven that all my
good,
And the greater
good I will make,
Were purchased me by a multitude
Who suffered for
my sake?
That I was delivered by mere
mankind
Vowed to one sacrifice,
And not, as I hold them, battle-blind,
But dying with
opened eyes?
That they did not ask me to
draw the sword
When they stood
to endure their lot,
What they only looked to me
for a word,
And I answered
I knew them not?
