Though our friend the young Lieutenant of Marines was no sailor he was a scholar, trained in the class-rooms and playing fields, of a great English school. He was profoundly impressed, as all outsiders must be, by the engrained efficiency of the seafolk among whom he now dwelt, their easy mastery of the technicalities of sea craft, and their almost childish ignorance of everything that lay outside it. It was borne in upon him that they were a race apart, bred to their special work as terriers and racehorses are bred, the perfect product of numberless generations of sea fighters. It was borne in upon him, too, that no nation coming late to the sea, like the Germans, could, though taking an infinity of thought, possibly stand up against us. Sea power does not consist of ships but of men. For a real Navy does not so much design and build ships as secrete them. They are the expression in machinery of its brains and Soul. He arrived at this conclusion after much patient thought and then diffidently laid it before his experienced friend. The Sub-Lieutenant accepted the theory at once as beyond argument.
“That’s the whole secret, my son, the secret of the Navy. Fritz can’t design ships; he can only copy ours, and then he can’t make much of his copies. Take his submarine work. He has any amount of pluck, though he is a dirty swine; he doesn’t fail for want of pluck but because he hasn’t the right kind of nerve. That is where Fritz fails and where our boys succeed, because they were bred to the sea and their fathers before them, and their fathers before that. Submarining as a sport is exactly like stalking elephants on foot in long grass. One has to wriggle on one’s belly till one gets within close range, and then make sure of a kill in one shot. There’s no time for a second if one misses. Fritz will get fairly close up, sometimes—or did before we had taken his measure—but not that close enough to make dead sure of a hit. He is too much afraid of being seen when he pops his periscope above water. So he comes down between two stools. He is too far off for a certain hit and not far enough to escape being seen. That story I told you the other day was an exact illustration. The moment he pops up the destroyers swoop down upon him, he flinches, looses off a mouldy, somehow, anyhow, and then gets down. That sort of thing is no bally use; one doesn’t sink battleships that fool way. Our men first make sure of their hit at the closest range, and then think about getting down—or don’t get down. They do their work without worrying about being sunk themselves the instant after. That’s just the difference between us and the Germans, between terriers and rats. It’s no good taking partial risks in submarine work; one must go the whole hog or leave it alone.
“Risks are queer things,” went on the Sub-Lieutenant, reflectively. “The bigger they are, the less one gets hurt. Just look at the seaplanes. One would think that the ordinary dangers of flight were bad enough—the failure of a stay, the misfiring of an engine, a bad gusty wind—and so we thought before the war. It looked the forlornest of hopes to rush upon an enemy plane, shoot him down at the shortest of range, or ram him if one couldn’t get a kill any other way. It seemed that if two planes stood up to one another, both must certainly be lost. And so they would. Yet time and again our Flight officers have charged the German planes, seen them run away or drop into the sea, and come off themselves with no more damage than a hole or two through the wings. It’s just nerve, nerve and breeding. When we dash in upon Fritz with submarine or seaplanes, taking no count of the risks, but seeking only to kill, he almost always either blunders or runs. It isn’t that he lacks pluck—don’t believe that silly libel; Fritz is as brave as men are made—but he hasn’t the sporting nerve. He will take risks in the mass, but he doesn’t like them single; we do. He doesn’t love big game shooting, on foot, alone; we do. He does his best; he obeys orders up to any limit; he will fight and die without shrinking. But he is not a natural fighting man, and he is always thinking of dying. We love fighting, love it so much that we don’t give a thought to the dying part. We just look upon the risk as that which gives spice to the game.”
“I believe,” said the Marine, thoughtfully, “that you have exactly described the difference between the races. With us fighting and dying are parts of one great glorious game; with Fritz they are the most solemn of business. We laugh all the time and sing music-hall songs; Fritz never smiles and sings the Wacht am Rhein. I am beginning to realize that our irrepressible levity is a mighty potent force, mightier by far than Fritz’s solemnity. The true English spirit is to be seen at its best and brightest in the Navy, and the Navy is always ready for the wildest of schoolboy rags. If I had not come to sea I might myself have become a solemn blighter like Fritz.”
In the wardroom that evening the Marine repeated the Sub-Lieutenant’s story and was assured that it was true. The Navy will pull a Soldier’s leg with a joyous disregard for veracity, but there is a crudity about its invention which soon ceases to deceive. They can invent nothing which approaches in wonder the marvels which happen every day.
The talk then fell upon the ever-engrossing topic of submarine catching, and experiences flowed forth in a stream which filled the Marine with astonishment and admiration. He had never served an apprenticeship in a submarine catcher and the sea business in small sporting craft was altogether new to him.
“It is a pity,” at last said a regular Navy Lieutenant, “that submarines are no good against other submarines. That is a weakness which we must seek to overcome if, as seems likely in the future, navies contain more under-water boats than any other craft.”
“That is not quite true,” spoke up a grizzled Royal Naval Reserve man, and told a story of submarine v. submarine which I am not permitted to repeat.