The British fleet was always on a war footing.  It must be.  Lack of naval preparedness is more dangerous than lack of land preparedness.  It is fatal.  I know of officers who had had only a week’s leave in a year in time of peace; their pay is less than our officers’.  Patriotism kept them up to the mark.

And another thing:  once a sailor, always a sailor, is an old saying; but it has a new application in modern navies.  They become fascinated with the very drudgery of ship existence.  They like their world, which is their house and their shop.  It has the attraction of a world of priestcraft, with them alone understanding the ritual.  Their drill at the guns becomes the preparation for the great sport of target practice, which beats any big-game shooting when guns compete with guns, with battle practice greater sport than target practice.  Bringing a ship into harbour well, holding her to her place in the formation, roaming over the seas in a destroyer—­all means eternal effort at the mastery of material, with the results positively demonstrated.

On one of the Dreadnoughts I saw a gun’s crew drilling with a dummy six-inch; weight, one hundred pounds.

“Isn’t that boy pretty young to handle that big shell?” an admiral asked a junior officer.

“He doesn’t think so,” the officer replied.  “We haven’t anyone who could handle it better.  It would break his heart if we changed his position.”

Not one of fifty German prisoners whom I had seen filing by over in France was as sturdy as this youngster.  In the ranks of an infantry company of any army he would have been above the average of physique; but among the rest of the gun’s crew he did appear slight.  Need more be said about the physical standard of the crews of the fighting ships of the Grand Fleet?

You had an eye to more than guns and machinery and to more than the character of the officers.  You wanted to get better acquainted with the personnel of the men behind the guns.  They formed patches of blue on the decks, as one looked around the fleet, against the background of the dull, painted bulwarks of steel—­the human element whose skill gave the ships life—­deep-chested, vigorous men in their prime, who had the air of men grounded in their work by long experience.  I noted when an order was given that it was obeyed quickly by one who knew what he had to do because he had done it thousands of times.

There are all kinds of bluejackets, as there are all kinds of other men.  Before the war some took more than was good for them when on shore; some took nothing stronger than tea; some enjoyed the sailor’s privilege of growling; some had to be kept up to the mark sharply; an occasional one might get rebellious against the merciless repetition of drills.

The war imparted eagerness to all, the officers said.  Infractions of discipline ceased.  Days pass without anyone of the crew of a Dreadnought having to be called up as a defaulter, I am told.  And their health?  At first thought, one would say that life in the steel caves of a Dreadnought would mean pasty complexions and flabby muscles.  For a year the crews had been prisoners of that readiness which must not lose a minute in putting to sea if von Tirpitz should ever try the desperate gamble of battle.