In this town, facing the sea, is a street lined with quaint houses painted in yellows and browns and greens, and under each house the kind of a shop that brings back to the middleaged delectable memories of extreme youth and nickels to spend.  Up and down that street on a bright Saturday afternoon may be seen our Middle-Western jackies chumming with the British sailors and Tommies, or flirting with the Irish girls, or gazing through the little panes of the show-windows, whose enterprising proprietors have imported from the States a popular brand of chewing-gum to make us feel more at home.  In one of these shops, where I went to choose a picture post-card, I caught sight of an artistic display of a delicacy I had thought long obsolete—­the everlasting gum-drop.  But when I produced a shilling the shopkeeper shook his head.  “Sure, every day the sailors are wanting to buy them of me, but it’s for ornament I’m keeping them,” he said.  “There’s no more to be had till the war will be over.  Eight years they’re here now, and you wouldn’t get a tooth in them, sir!” So I wandered out again, joined the admiral, and inspected the Bluejackets’ Club by the water’s edge.  Nothing one sees, perhaps, is so eloquent of the change that has taken place in the life and fabric of our navy.  If you are an enlisted man, here in this commodious group of buildings you can get a good shore meal and entertain your friends among the Allies, you may sleep in a real bed, instead of a hammock, you may play pool, or see a moving-picture show, or witness a vaudeville worthy of professionals, like that recently given in honour of the visit of the admiral of our Atlantic fleet.  A band of thirty pieces furnished the music, and in the opinion of the jackies one feature alone was lacking to make the entertainment a complete success—­the new drop-curtain had failed to arrive from London.  I happened to be present when this curtain was first unrolled, and beheld spread out before me a most realistic presentation of “little old New York,” seen from the North River, towering against blue American skies.  And though I have never been overfond of New York, that curtain in that place gave me a sensation!

Such is the life of our officers and sailors in these strange times that have descended upon us.  Five to eight days of vigilance, of hardship and danger—­in short, of war—­and then three days of relaxation and enjoyment in clubs, on golf-courses and tennis-courts, barring the time it takes to clean ship and paint.  There need be no fear that the war will be neglected.  It is eminently safe to declare that our service will be true to its traditions.

III