“‘Says he’s goin’ down, sir,” the signaller replies.  What the submarine had spelt out, and everybody knows it, was:  “Cannot approve of this extremely frightful weather.  Am going to bye-bye.”

“Well!” snaps the lieutenant to his signaller, “what are you grinning at?” The submarine has hung on to ask if the destroyer will “kiss her and whisper good-night.”  A breaking sea smacks her tower in the middle of the insult.  She closes like an oyster, but—­just too late. Habet! There must be a quarter of a ton of water somewhere down below, on its way to her ticklish batteries.

“What a wag!” says the signaller, dreamily.  “Well, ’e can’t say ’e didn’t get ’is little kiss.”

The lieutenant in command smiles.  The sea is a beast, but a just beast.

RACIAL UNTRUTHS

This is trivial enough, but what would you have?  If Admirals will not strike the proper attitudes, nor Lieutenants emit the appropriate sentiments, one is forced back on the truth, which is that the men at the heart of the great matters in our Empire are, mostly, of an even simplicity.  From the advertising point of view they are stupid, but the breed has always been stupid in this department.  It may be due, as our enemies assert, to our racial snobbery, or, as others hold, to a certain God-given lack of imagination which saves us from being over-concerned at the effects of our appearances on others.  Either way, it deceives the enemies’ people more than any calculated lie.  When you come to think of it, though the English are the worst paper-work and viva voce liars in the world, they have been rigorously trained since their early youth to live and act lies for the comfort of the society in which they move, and so for their own comfort.  The result in this war is interesting.

It is no lie that at the present moment we hold all the seas in the hollow of our hands.  For that reason we shuffle over them shame-faced and apologetic, making arrangements here and flagrant compromises there, in order to give substance to the lie that we have dropped fortuitously into this high seat and are looking round the world for some one to resign it to.  Nor is it any lie that, had we used the Navy’s bare fist instead of its gloved hand from the beginning, we could in all likelihood have shortened the war.  That being so, we elected to dab and peck at and half-strangle the enemy, to let him go and choke him again.  It is no lie that we continue on our inexplicable path animated, we will try to believe till other proof is given, by a cloudy idea of alleviating or mitigating something for somebody—­not ourselves. [Here, of course, is where our racial snobbery comes in, which makes the German gibber.  I cannot understand why he has not accused us to our Allies of having secret commercial understandings with him.] For that reason, we shall finish the German eagle as the merciful lady killed the chicken.  It took her the whole afternoon, and then, you will remember, the carcase had to be thrown away.