checking deliveries and writing out receipts. Some old peasant

women were already weeping aloud.
When our car drew up at the door of the hotel, the manager himself

came to help my wife out. In the first moment I did not quite
recognise him. His luxuriant black locks were gone, his head was

closely cropped, and as I glanced at it he smiled and said: "I
shall sleep at the barracks to-night."

I cannot reproduce the atmosphere of that night, the first night
after mobilisation. The shops and the gateways of the houses were

of course closed, but all through the dark hours the town hummed
with voices; the echoes of distant shouts entered the open windows

of our bedroom. Groups of men talking noisily walked in the middle
of the road-way escorted by distressed women: men of all callings

and of all classes going to report themselves at the fortress. Now
and then a military car tooting furiously would whisk through the

streets empty of wheeled traffic, like an intensely black shadow
under the great flood of electric lights on the grey pavement.

But what produced the greatest impression on my mind was a
gathering at night in the coffee-room of my hotel of a few men of

mark whom I was asked to join. It was about one o'clock in the
morning. The shutters were up. For some reason or other the

electric light was not switched on, and the big room was lit up
only by a few tall candles, just enough for us to see each other's

faces by. I saw in those faces the awful desolation of men whose
country, torn in three, found itself engaged in the contest with no

will of its own, and not even the power to assert itself at the
cost of life. All the past was gone, and there was no future,

whatever happened; no road which did not seem to lead to moral
annihilation. I remember one of those men addressing me after a

period of mournful silence compounded of mentalexhaustion and
unexpressed forebodings.

"What do you think England will do? If there is a ray of hope
anywhere it is only there."

I said: "I believe I know what England will do" (this was before
the news of the violation of Belgian neutrality arrived), "though I

won't tell you, for I am not absolutely certain. But I can tell
you what I am absolutely certain of. It is this: If England comes

into the war, then, no matter who may want to make peace at the end
of six months at the cost of right and justice, England will keep

on fighting for years if necessary. You may reckon on that."
"What, even alone?" asked somebody across the room.

I said: "Yes, even alone. But if things go so far as that England
will not be alone."

I think that at that moment I must have been inspired.
WELL DONE--1918

I.
It can be safely said that for the last four years the seamen of

Great Britain have done well. I mean that every kind and sort of
human being classified as seaman, steward, fore-mast hand, fireman,

lamp-trimmer, mate, master, engineer, and also all through the
innumerable ratings of the Navy up to that of Admiral, has done

well. I don't say marvellously well or miraculously well or
wonderfully well or even very well, because these are simply over-

statements of undisciplined minds. I don't deny that a man may be
a marvellous being, but this is not likely to be discovered in his

lifetime, and not always even after he is dead. Man's
marvellousness is a hidden thing, because the secrets of his heart

are not to be read by his fellows. As to a man's work, if it is
done well it is the very utmost that can be said. You can do well,

and you can do no more for people to see. In the Navy, where human
values are thoroughly" target="_blank" title="ad.完全地，彻底地">thoroughly understood, the highest signal of

commendation complimenting a ship (that is, a ship's company) on
some achievements consists exactly of those two simple words "Well

done," followed by the name of the ship. Not marvellously done,
astonishingly done, wonderfully done--no, only just:

"Well done, so-and-so."
And to the men it is a matter of infinite pride that somebody

should judge it proper to mention aloud, as it were, that they have
done well. It is a memorableoccurrence, for in the sea services

you are expected professionally and as a matter of course to do
well, because nothing less will do. And in sober speech no man can

be expected to do more than well. The superlatives are mere signs
of uninformed wonder. Thus the official signal which can express

nothing but a delicate share of appreciation becomes a great
honour.

Speaking now as a purely civil seaman (or, perhaps, I ought to say
civilian, because politeness is not what I have in my mind) I may

say that I have never expected the Merchant Service to do otherwise
than well during the war. There were people who obviously did not

feel the same confidence, nay, who even confidently expected to see
the collapse of merchant seamen's courage. I must admit that such

pronouncements did arrest my attention. In my time I have never
been able to detect any faint hearts in the ships' companies with

whom I have served in various capacities. But I reflected that I
had left the sea in '94, twenty years before the outbreak of the

war that was to apply its severe test to the quality of modern
seamen. Perhaps they had deteriorated, I said unwillingly to

myself. I remembered also the alarmist articles I had read about
the great number of foreigners in the British Merchant Service, and

I didn't know how far these lamentations were justified.
In my time the proportion of non-Britishers in the crews of the

ships flying the red ensign was rather under one-third, which, as a
matter of fact, was less than the proportion allowed under the very

strict French navigation laws for the crews of the ships of that
nation. For the strictest laws aiming at the preservation of

national seamen had to recognise the difficulties of manning
merchant ships all over the world. The one-third of the French law

seemed to be the irreducible minimum. But the British proportion
was even less. Thus it may be said that up to the date I have

mentioned the crews of British merchant ships engaged in deep water
voyages to Australia, to the East Indies and round the Horn were

essentially British. The small proportion of foreigners which I
remember were mostly Scandinavians, and my general impression

remains that those men were good stuff. They appeared always able
and ready to do their duty by the flag under which they served.

The majority were Norwegians, whose courage and straightness of
character are matters beyond doubt. I remember also a couple of

Finns, both carpenters, of course, and very good craftsmen; a
Swede, the most scientific sailmaker I ever met; another Swede, a

steward, who really might have been called a British seaman since
he had sailed out of London for over thirty years, a rather

superior person; one Italian, an everlastingly smiling but a
pugnacious character; one Frenchman, a most excellent sailor,

tireless and indomitable under very difficult circumstances; one
Hollander, whose placid manner of looking at the ship going to

pieces under our feet I shall never forget, and one young,
colourless, muscularly very strong German, of no particular

character. Of non-European crews, lascars and Kalashes, I have had
very little experience, and that was only in one steamship and for

something less than a year. It was on the same occasion that I had
my only sight of Chinese firemen. Sight is the exact word. One

didn't speak to them. One saw them going along the decks, to and
fro, characteristic figures with rolled-up pigtails, very dirty

when coming off duty and very clean-faced when going on duty. They
never looked at anybody, and one never had occasion to address them

directly. Their appearances in the light of day were very regular,
and yet somewhat ghostlike in their detachment and silence.

But of the white crews of British ships and almost exclusively
British in blood and descent, the immediate predecessors of the men

whose worth the nation has discovered for itself to-day, I have had
a thorough experience. At first amongst them, then with them, I

have shared all the conditions of their very special life. For it
was very special. In my early days, starting out on a voyage was

like being launched into Eternity. I say advisedly Eternity
instead of Space, because of the boundless silence which swallowed

up one for eighty days--for one hundred days--for even yet more
days of an existence without echoes and whispers. Like Eternity