But the Captain did not smile until he said: “You put it strangely, but I think I understand you. We are brutalized, in fact?”
“No, sir, I don’t think so. If we were brutalized we should be brutes ashore and brutes consistently on board. We are neither one nor the other. It’s this—that one branch of us is starved, stunted, so that it can’t grow, and consequently the other branch develops abnormally.”
“And I can see no cure for that. We have our job to do. There is very little time for anything else. Of course,” the Captain added, his words coming slowly, “when you come to think of it, our job itself is ethically indefensible.”
They pondered that overwhelming statement in silence, each momently unconscious of the other’s presence. When at last Hartington met the Captain’s eyes he saw in them a strange expression, half guilty, half amused.
“I’m afraid that’s true. We have probably struck bed-rock,” the Captain said, with a smile. Then, suddenly serious, he added: “That goes no further, Hartington.”
“No, sir.”
The Captain laughed—nervously, Hartington thought. “And since we can’t abolish the Service, Hartington, or the forces behind that make it necessary, let us return to practical politics. Taking your causes in reverse order: We can but nibble at the third. You recommend that the Gunroom should be made tolerable. That’s something. A decent place to live in, so far as its size permits—some of the amenities of life preserved—not utterly a bear-garden. Further, I propose to help, if I can, by having the snotties to dine in here, and talking books, or games, or travel, or the theory of cruiser screens—anything, in short, but everyday shop and everyday women, the Gunroom topics. A clean napkin, a smooth shirt-front, and bright glass and silver have an extraordinarily civilizing effect. Besides, to a snotty’s mind, these quarters of mine seem spacious, and room to move is room to think. And your job consists in making your own personality felt; stop them talking and thinking filth eternally. But you are up against it, Hartington; the China Station, the naval officer’s Mecca, because on the surface it seems slack and pleasant, is a test—but more of that later on. Your second cause—the pressure of work, the sense of war, and a break-up of all our lives being so close that the ‘long view’ is unattainable. Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die; be cruel, brutal, at any rate, unheeding, for to-morrow—God knows what may happen! That’s the attitude. Frankly, I don’t know how to change it. Religion, any kind of religion, any quick sense of worlds outside our own and of time beyond our time, might change it. But that’s hopeless in a Gunroom. There can be no God where there’s no privacy. Do you realize that there is no place in this ship where midshipmen can pray? By their chests, in a public passage, with marines in hammocks blaspheming above their heads? Or they could pray on their backs in their own hammocks if they remembered. But they are tired and sleepy, and they forget—so the fact stands. I dare say they could do without formal prayers. But no one can do without occasional seclusion. They are for ever rubbing shoulders with their own sordidness, until at last they come to think they are all sordid, and care to be nothing else. That’s the root of the snotty’s tragedy, Hartington. I’m sure of it. He’s never alone—never, from the moment he comes on board to the moment he gets ashore. His mind hasn’t a chance to expand—to stray out into the vague purposelessness from which, if you can trace them back far enough, all right purposes spring.”
“I’ve given two of them—Lynwood and Fane-Herbert—leave to use my cabin whenever I’m not there. There isn’t room for more, sir.”
“No, there isn’t room for more,” the Captain said. “I dare say some of the Wardroom would do likewise if I dropped a hint, but, though it is some gain, there’s no real seclusion in another man’s cabin. That problem’s insoluble, Hartington, while ships are built as they are, and so they must be built if they are to be efficient fighting units. It brings us back again to the essential immorality of our calling, and—and to the forces behind that make our calling inevitable. Doesn’t it?”