“British officers are too fond of golf and other games—they do not study enough. They are very stiff at first, but nice when you know them. They are always very clean, spick and span, and well shaved. On board a British warship it is always very impressive—it is the most impressive navy in the world. And it is more ready than many people think.”
French.
“The French is a funny navy, and it is hard to say what is good and what is bad in it, for the thing that looks good may be bad, and the thing that looks bad, good. They have some very clever engineers.”
German.
“The German officers all seem ‘strong.’ To many they seem always overbearing. They hope to be the greatest navy in the world; and plenty of them think that they already are.”
Russian.[41]
“The Russians are brave—very brave. But not many are good, and they are savages. They can be very polite when it suits them; when not—ah! Russian sailors are miserable people who lie in the snow, who have very little money, which they spend in buying cheap fish. They are very dirty. That is all we know of Russian sailors, who are quite like strange people to us. But we have no fear as to the result of a war with the Polar Bear.”
United States, America.
“The Americans have a wonderful navy with wonderful ships. Everything American is more wonderful than anything else in the world, so that we do not know what to believe.”
Themselves.