John Bower - H.M.S. –

The guest laughed. "Well, I'm not in politics now," he said. "What is your definition of this strange animal?"

There was a pause, and then a cautious reply, "Well, he's an M.P."

"But I know some very charming M.P.'s – are they all politicians?"

"Oh no, sir. They're different. It's a question of standards, really."

"Ah, but what are the standards?"

"Well, you see – we have one – and civilians have another, business people and so on, and then there's the politicians."

"You ought to write a dictionary, Pongo – you snub-nosed old shell-back. No, I ain't scrapping, and if you get up I'll take your chair."

"Whose got a cigarette? No, not one of your stinkers – gimme one of yours, Guns."

The officer addressed politely passed a cigarette across in his fingers, and turning in his chair beckoned to a marine servant who was just returning with an empty tray from the Bridge table.

"A cigarette, please, waiter – and debit it to the account of my honourable friend Mr Maugham, here. I'll stop your cadging, Pongo – if I have to take on the tobacco accounts to do it."

"Lucky there's no shortage of 'baccy, or all the armies would strike."

"Well, that'd be one way to stop the war. You can't fight without it. Wish we had some tobacco shares. Some people must be making a lot."

"Not so much as the food people."

"I don't believe the food people do make so much. It's the world shortage that causes the trouble, not the prices – or rather one involves the other."

"It isn't so much that. It's a rise of prices all round. Things get expensive, so the country strikes for higher wages and gets them – then prices go up because the sovereign has depreciated, and they strike again. It goes on in a vicious circle."

"Can't be a circle – because that's progression. You've got to get to a smash in time."

"Yes, it means there'll be just as much cash in the world, but every one will be poor. Cash isn't wealth – work is wealth, and all work nowadays is wasted. We're chucking it into the air in Flanders."

"Well, we'll last out this war, and then have to lash out."

"Oh yes – there'll be room to lash out in, too. We'll be back in Elizabeth's days – lots of room for every one, but no capital."

"So long as there are no Huns we'll be happy, so what's the odds? Give us a match."

"Well, I want a few Huns left to compare notes with after this. It would be dull to hear our own side only. One couldn't meet their Army, of course, but their Navy's not so bad. They've tried to fight clean, at any rate, and they fight good and 'earty. Yes, I know about Fritz, but if you had orders to torpedo liners, wouldn't you do it? 'Course you would, if you were told they were carrying munitions and you were saving your country by it. There are Fritzes who like it, certainly, but we have to give the others the benefit of the doubt."

"Well, I'd like to read their logs and so on after the war, though we'll be so damn sick of all the truck they'll publish here when the Censor pays off that we wont want to read much of anything."

"It isn't the stuff just after the war one would like to read. I'd like to be alive in a hundred years to read the truth."

"Well, you wont be if you knock my drink over with your hairy hoofs – sit still!"

"It'd do you good if I did knock it over – your hoary-headed old rip. Guns, do you think they'll have raised our pay in a hundred years' time?"

"I doubt it. They'll pay off the Navy and economise as soon as peace is signed – "

" – And we'll have another war on our hands inside six months – we always do; we've always retrenched after a war, and then had to give bonuses to get the men back inside a year."

"Well, they'll pay off the battleships, anyway – and only keep the fast cruisers and the submarines."

"You and your submarines! Have you heard from your brother lately?"

"Yes, he tells me if I'm going to join I've got to remember it's the greatest honour to be – half a sec., I've got the letter here – to be alive and able to get into the greatest and most efficient Service of the Greatest Navy the world has ever seen, in the Greatest event in History since the Moon broke off."

There was a two seconds' silence (which is long for a Naval discussion), then —

"Well, cutting out the swollen-headed tosh about the Greatest Service, which I take it he means to refer to submarines, I don't know that he's far wrong."

"Well, I suppose we shall have our pasts and presents all looked up, and that people at the U.S. Institution will argue about us like they did a few years ago about Trafalgar."

"No fear. They'll all be peaceful then, and we'll be barbarians, and not to be spoken of."

"Barbarian, my foot! We're the cleanest lot in England, and the English are cleaner than most races."

"Do you think there'll be another battle?"

"Oh, help! If that cag's going to start, I'm off. Good-night, sir."

"I must go too, Jim," said the guest, with a startled glance at the clock. "Where did I leave my coat?"

The Senior Engineer rose and followed them out, hearing as he passed through the door an unwearying voice by the stove – "I know a chap on Beatty's staff, and he says they'll fight next spring or summer."

" Hit first – hit hard – and keep on hitting , is a good rule, but what I want to impress on you is that in this war the last part of that rule is the most important. The enemy shoots remarkably well – at a target – but he does not appear to stand punishment well himself. It is remarkable how the German shooting falls off once he gets a few big shells aboard him, and up to date it has been noticeable that our own practice is, up to a certain point, improved by our being hit. It is just a matter of sticking power…"

The Gunnery Lieutenant paused in his lecture and sighed. "Would these pasty-faced beggars stick it?" He had had a week to train the crew – most of them raw hands – of the latest and fastest light cruiser, into a semblance of war efficiency, and the effort was tiring him. They were so very new and unintelligent, and he had had to go over the A B C of gunnery with them as if they had never been through their course before joining. Seven bells struck, and he dismissed the class and sent them shuffling and elbowing out of the flat.

They had been stationed at the guns three hours and had seen nothing. This was their second day out, and the first nervousness and feeling of shyness at being in enemy waters was wearing off. The mist that had been with them since dawn was clearing away too, and the gunlayer of No. Five straightened his back and stretched himself against the shield. This was a silly game, he decided. Two cables astern the knife-edge stem of a sister ship was parting their wake into two creamy undulating waves which seemed to spoil the mirror-like surface of what the German wireless has with inimitable humour termed "The fringe of the English barred zone," or as their Lordships more drily put it, "The mouth of the Bight."

The gunlayer spat carefully over the side and felt in his cap-rim for a cigarette. He calculated that he would make the "fag," with care, last till breakfast. Fourteen days in commission had at any rate taught him that the art of shortening up the frequent spells of boredom consisted in a judicious mixture of tobacco and thinking, and as smoking was barred under heavy penalties during the dark hours, his brain had been somewhat overworked since four. As he fumbled for his matches he froze suddenly still as a bugle blared "Action stations!" from the bridge above him. He heard the beginnings of the clatter of men closing up and the hum of activity along the deck, but till the cold shiver had passed from him he could not move. His one idea was that this was real , and he would give anything to be out of it. Then in a flash he was at his sights, his hands on the focussing-ring and his head close up to the telescope, in fear that others might see something in his face that he did not want them to see. For exactly the same reasons some hundred other men on the upper deck were becoming feverishly busy, but before the last note of the bugle had died the guns' crews were over their stage fright, and were, with perhaps a little more care and intelligence than they had shown at drill, closing up to their guns.