Leaning against the wall in a corner of the dining-room of the French château were the P. P’s’ colours. Major Niven took off the wrapper in order that I might see the flag with the initials of the battalion which Princess Patricia embroidered with her own hands. There’s room, one repeats, for a little sentiment and a little emotion, too, between Halifax and Vancouver.
“Of course we could not take our colours into action,” said Niven. “They would have been torn into tatters or buried in a shell crater. But we’ve always kept them up at battalion headquarters. I believe we are the only battalion that has. We promised the Princess that we would.”
In her honour an old custom has been renewed in France: knights are fighting in the name of a fair lady.
XXVI
FINDING THE BRITISH FLEET
The Briton’s island instinct—Secrecy surrounding the fleet—The magic message—The journey—A night drive along the bleak coast of Scotland—Boy scouts as sentries—An obdurate guard—The navy yard—The Admiral’s “quarter deck”—The largest contract in all England—Great dry docks—Patriots in workmen’s clothes.
The Briton’s national self-consciousness is surrounded by salt water. His island instinct is only another word for sea instinct. Ebb and flow of war on the Continent, play of party politics at home, optimism and pessimism wrestling in the press—in the back of his head he was thinking of the navy.
During the first year of the war all other curtains of military secrecy were parted at intervals; but the world of British naval operations seemed hermetically sealed. One could only imagine what the Grand Fleet was like. He had despaired of ever seeing it in the life, when good fortune slipped a message across the Channel to the British front, which became the magic carpet of transition from the burrowing army in its trenches to the solid decks of battleships; which changed the war correspondent’s modern steed, the automobile, trailing dust over French roads, to destroyers trailing foam in choppy seas off English coasts.
But not all the journeying was on destroyers. One must travel by car also if he would know something of the intricate, busy world of the Admiralty’s work, which makes coastguards a part of its personnel. There was more than ships to see; more than one place to go in that wonderful week.