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, foremast 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 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 memorable occurrence, 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.