W. MacNeile Dixon

“ Men do not always fight and die in the light, and legions of shining acts must remain unsung. With the best will in the world you cannot number the brave men in the world; nor make your battle canvas as huge as you please will you find room in it for all the gallant faces. If it be sad to think that they will be forgotten, it is inspiring to think they are so many. Because courage and resource and determination are everywhere, a single scene or act is nowhere elevated above the rest. ”

“ It is better not to break the horns of the ungodly in this case, for when the horns are broken the mine explodes. Some are arranged to come up to the surface long after they are hidden in the depths, and at unexpected times, like regrettable incidents from a hectic past. Others are constructed with fiendish ingenuity to wait after touching a ship until they have felt at its most vulnerable part before exploding. Some are made to float about at random, as a malevolent wit flings about his spiteful jests, caring not whom he wounds. ”

“ If you are in search of adventure on board a mine-sweeper and are in luck you may enjoy the excitement of an aeroplane attack, with bombs dropping around you from the overhead circling enemy, or machine gun bullets rattling on the deck from a German battle-plane. Or again an angry submarine commander rising out of the deep may send a shell or two your way. For the rest it is a peaceful life, and if you escape the attentions of all these death-dealing devices, mine, aeroplane and submarine, you may arrive home safe enough. ”

“ And now that the fiery wheel of fate has revolved once more and swept the peoples into the maelstrom of war, history repeats itself, and the mariners of England from the merchant and fishing fleets are fighting men once more as in the old and famous days. ”

“ Not for a moment is it disputable that despite all its immense resources and striking power the Grand Fleet could not have saved Europe or Britain as they have been saved from ruinous defeat. Without her merchant sailors, without her fisher-folk in this war as waged with a cunning and ruthless foe, the life blood of Britain would [16] inevitably have ebbed away drop by drop, a creeping and fatal paralysis overtaken her. ”

“ Here you have an almost limitless expanse and without a barrier, here you have what was once the dividing flood, the estranging ocean, what is now Nature's great medium of communication. There are no difficult mountains to cross, no scorching deserts, the way lies open. One can sail round the world without touching land, one cannot walk round it without somewhere crossing the sea. ”

“ How is an enemy to be resisted who can attack unexpectedly and, if threatened, vanish like a dream? Each of our merchant vessels, it has been said is like an unarmed man walking down a dark lane infested with armed highwaymen. Carrying 30 or 40 of a crew, armed with a gun for surface fighting, and that terrible and devastating weapon, the torpedo, for the secret offensive, capable of an underwater speed—8-10 knots—equal to, and a surface speed of 18 to 20 knots—far in excess of the average trader ”

“ Called upon for every type of action, navigating under war conditions by lightless coasts, responsible for new and strange undertakings, in armed or defenceless craft, on the bridge of sinking ships or adrift in open boats, the fearless spirit of the British sailor meets the occasion, and as with his ancestor and prototype of the Viking times, the harder the enterprise the harder grows his heart. ”

“ Free yourself from restraint, lay aside obligations moral and legal, and for the destruction of commerce you have in the submarine a weapon without equal, an immoral inspiration. Unaware that the world, had outgrown morals, that chivalry was wholly out of date, Britain taken aback had, it may be confessed, no ready or immediate answer, and it seemed indeed as if the new instrument possessed qualities unanswerable, borrowed from the region of fable. Only in fables does one put on at will the mantle of invisibility or don invulnerable armour. ”

“ Within a few hours steaming of the lively scene, when you may count as many as fifty vessels within sight at one time, lies the magnificent German fleet, for it is magnificent, save the British the finest the world has ever seen, equipped with all the most destructive engines the heart of man could devise. Hindenburg and his devoted divisions suffer terrible things under the fire of 4,000 British guns, discharging 200,000 tons of shells within the passage of a few short weeks. ”

“ They depart and arrive along the familiar belts of passenger and trade routes with the regularity and exactness of the great land expresses. Safe in times of peace from all dangers save the natural perils of the sea, the freedom of this, the broadest and busiest of all highways, open to all, used by all, vital to the modern structure of civilisation, is unchallenged. Imagine this highway closed and the whole fabric falls to pieces, trade expires, commerce is at an end, famine and chaos impend over half the inhabited regions of the globe. ”

“ Never before have her merchant navies been called upon to support so stupendous an operation, to carry almost the whole weight of transport and supplies for millions of fighting men. Since ships are the railroads of the Allies; since without ships neither soldiers nor guns can reach the distant seats of war; since without them Britain herself cannot hope to sustain her life—ships and sailors have been and are, as they have been in the past, the first and last and utterly essential element. ”

“ To read too of men like the trawler skipper, who, when a shell from a pursuing submarine smashed part of the wheel under his hands, "went on steering with the broken spokes," fought his enemy with his light gun and finally drove him off, makes one feel that it is something to have entered life under British colours. Sir Percy Scott cannot have had the British sailor in his eye when in his forecast of the character maritime war would probably assume he wrote, "Trade is timid, it will not need more than one or two ships sent to the bottom to hold up the food supply of this country." ”

“ Into the teeth of this hurricane of hate the merchant seamen put forth, and every hour that we watch it from sheltered homes is taking toll of their lives. Read the long list of officers in the service that are gone, and remember that beyond it lies a longer and more sorrowful category still of men that held no rank nor ever thought of fame; engineers and deck hands, boys and stokers, so that in the fishing villages from North to South the tiniest mourns its unreturning dead. ”

“ Let us separate them neither in our thoughts nor our affections, and say of our merchant sailors and fishermen as of the Royal Navy that—what was expected of them they accomplished, what was required of them they gave; if courage it was there, if skill it was always forthcoming, if death they offered their lives freely. There were among them no strikers or conscientious objectors. In all the virtues that mankind have held honourable they need not fear comparison either with their own ancestors or with their adversaries. ”

“ Then the steering gear went, and the vessel was [91] thrown on her beam ends. Wallowing in the trough, it seemed impossible that she could live, the seas mounting to her upper deck. But live she did, and without food or drink, with the last ounce of their strength spent and more than spent, supported by their own dauntless determination and that incalculable fortune which loves to side with a superb undertaking, they made land and the port of Cardiff, to the honour of both Britain and America, an alliance we may believe invincible. ”

“ It is good for us now and then to contemplate men nobler than ourselves; to be told that volunteers over 60 years of age paid their own passage from Australia to serve afloat, that there is at least one engineer—and a health to him—of over 80 with a commission in the Royal Naval Reserve. For who is there so dead at heart as not to covet so springing and mounting a spirit? ”

“ Let it not be said that we shall do justice to our merchant sailors and fishermen when the history of their doings in these days comes to be written. It will never be written. And for several good and sufficient reasons. Battles on sea or land may be described, great moments in the dreary annals of war. In armies masses of men, in fleets numbers of ships act together, and some picture of the great assault or the heroic defence can be painted in broad outlines. But the ships of the merchant service are solitary wayfarers, scattered units in a waste of waters. ”

“ It is doubtless a most important secondary operation of naval war, and is not likely to be abandoned till war itself shall cease: but regarded as a primary and fundamental measure, sufficient in itself to crush an enemy, it is probably a delusion, when presented in the fascinating garb of cheapness to the representatives of a people. Especially is it misleading when the nation against whom it is directed possesses, as Great Britain did and does, the two requisites of a strong sea power—a widespread healthy commerce and a powerful Navy. ”

“ Grey, tumbling waters are their winter portion, decks continually awash, frozen gear, intolerable motion. Watch that short bluff little vessel 100 miles from any port and a gale rising, with her high bows staggering up from the hollow of the wave that hid her from sight, streaming from rail to rail, to plunge headlong into the next hollow, climb up the approaching mountain to encounter the smothering crest, shake herself and disappear again into the turbid water between the bigger seas. ”

“ They were needed, every man of them. For it happened that in this most civilised warfare machines were employed with which, search the world round for them, no other men could effectively deal. But for their never resting labours the seas about these islands would have been as impassable for ships as a tropical forest for a motor car. Let us open our eyes and acknowledge the grandiosity of the German mind, the spaciousness of its schemes. It is not characteristic of Germany to do things by halves and the simple may well be amazed at the grandeur of her mine-laying campaign. ”

“ With this new and triple-headed engine Britain was to be bludgeoned into submission. You desire to make allowances for Germany's difficulties, and they were many. Waive then the inherent defect of these engines, that two of them cannot be employed with humanity. Argue if you like that in the interests of your own people, the general interests of the race must be sacrificed; that war is war, and that chivalrous war is a Christian absurdity. The Dark Ages would no doubt have described the use of the new weapons as savagery. In our enlightened times harsh phrases are inadmissible. ”

“ Anchors have rudely disturbed its repose when nestling in the sand, and an enterprising seaman has been known to leap aboard a rising vessel, lay about him with a hammer, smash the periscope tube and deprive the aggrieved monster, like another Polyphemus, of his single eye. Against observation or attack from the air, too, the submarine is wholly without defence. It is incapable of descending to great depths and rarely dives lower than 50 feet. ”

“ Only when we perceive the true character of the weapon and the value of the campaign can the endurance and achievements of [47] the merchant sailor emerge for us into the full sunshine of their splendour. Examine the matter coolly and one sees that the submarine owes its success as much to its novelty as to its inherent capacities. The limitations and defects are as obvious as the qualities. Virtually powerless on the surface against armed vessels of high speed like destroyers, completely submerged it has hearing indeed but not sight. ”

“ Unarmed audacity occasionally, indeed, achieves miracles. One gunless trawler by persistent ill-mannered harassing pursuit, so terrified a German commander who was attacking a merchant vessel, that his quarry escaped. Submarine hunting in armed craft is of course another matter and accounted the greatest of all great games. Sea-going Britons pine for it with an inextinguishable longing. Lowestoft mine-sweepers hanker after leave not to spend by the fireside but on this brave sport. Volunteers jostle each other for the service. ”

“ Men, when they discussed naval warfare, viewed it with speculative eye as a clash of battleships in one or two terrific, decisive, world-shaking encounters. Few, if any, foresaw that the enemy, declining the great issue, would aim at a slow grinding pressure, adopting a kind of warfare in which the fighting fleets would hardly feel the shock. ”

“ So we may put aside the hope that the future will help us better than the present to appreciate the "captains courageous" who in our time have upheld the long incomparable tradition of British seamen and seamanship. Yet if Britain be persuaded by their deeds to do justice to their successors, which will be nothing more than to do justice to herself, we may believe that even though unrecorded nothing has been lost. In the temple or cathedral or national monument one does not count less essential or less worthy the stones that are hid from view. ”

“ Submarines, despite Germany's boasts, one of her favourite weapons, cannot be built in a day nor yet a month, and crews are worse than useless with less than half a year's training. The end is not in sight but the barometer of hope must already be falling fast. "If the submarine attack against England be defeated," said Herr Ballin, "it will be a miracle, and I do not believe in miracles." ”

“ The German submarine hates the gun behind which stands a British crew, and prefers the warfare in which blow cannot be returned for blow. No Briton dislikes a fair fight, or doubts of his success in it, but a warfare in which he can neither see nor retaliate upon the foe, in which his hands are tied, strikes his simple and uncultured mind as cowardly. There is nothing for it but to run away, and for running away Britons are by nature little adapted.
Of the capital expended by Germany on this campaign 15 or 20 millions at least already lie in the ocean depths ”