Nor will anyone who was present in the summer of ’98 forget how Sir Edward Chichester stood loyally by Admiral George Dewey, when the German squadron was empire-fishing in the waters of Manila Bay, until our Atlantic fleet had won the battle of Santiago and Admiral Dewey had received reinforcements and, east and west, we were able to look after the Germans.  The British bluejackets said that the rations of frozen mutton from Australia which we sent alongside were excellent; but the Germans were in no position to judge, doubtless through an oversight in the detail of hospitality by one of Admiral Dewey’s staff.  Let us be officially correct and say there was no mutton to spare after the British had been supplied.

In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to relieve the legations against some hundreds of thousands of Boxers, Captain Bowman McCalla and his Americans worked with Admiral Seymour and his Britons in the most trying and picturesque adventure of its kind in modern history.  McCalla, too, was always talking of Jellicoe, who was wounded on the expedition; and Sir John’s face lighted at mention of McCalla’s name.  He recalled how McCalla had painted on the superstructure of the little Newark that saying of Farragut’s, “The best protection against an enemy’s fire is a well-directed fire of your own”; which has been said in other ways and cannot be said too often.

“We called McCalla Mr. Lead,” said Sir John; “he had been wounded so many times and yet was able to hobble along and keep on fighting.  We corresponded regularly until his death.”

Beatty, too, was on that expedition; and he, too, was another personality one kept hearing about.  It seemed odd that two men who had played a part in work which was a soldier’s far from home should have become so conspicuous in the Great War.  If on that day when, with ammunition exhausted, all members of the expedition had given up hope of ever returning alive, they had not accidentally come upon the Shi-kou arsenal, one would not be commanding the Grand Fleet and the other its battle-cruiser squadron.

Before the war, I am told, when Admiralty Lords and others who had the decision to make were discussing who should command in case of war, opinion ran something like this:  “Jellicoe!  He has the brains.”  “Jellicoe!  He has the health to endure the strain, with years enough and not too many.”  “Jellicoe!  He has the confidence of the service.”  The choice literally made itself.  When anyone is undertaking the gravest responsibility which has been an Englishman’s for a hundred years, this kind of a recommendation helps.  He had the guns; he had supreme command; he must deliver victory—­such was England’s message to him.

When I mentioned in a dispatch that all that differentiated him from the officers around him was the broader band of gold lace on his arm, an English naval critic wanted to know if I expected to find him in cloth of gold.  No; nor in full dress with all his medals on, as I saw him appear on the screen at a theatre in London.