Over earth and sea brooded the peace of empire.
XXII
THE AMERICAN SQUADRON
The morning found me a guest aboard the flagship of the American battleship squadron attached to the Grand Fleet. Going on deck, I found the sun struggling through thin, motionless mists. A layer of webby drops lay on wall and rail, on turret and gun. Presently a little cool wind, blowing from the land, fled over the calm water in mottled, scaly spots, bringing with it a piping beat of rhythmic music. Half a mile beyond the flagship, the crew of a British warship were running in a column round and round her decks to the music of the ship's band. An endless file of white clad figures bent forward, a faint regular tattoo of running feet. Round and about several of the giants were signalling in blinker. Beyond us stood a titanic bridge, whose network was here and there smouched with clinging vapour, and beneath this giant, a tanker laden with oil for the fleet passed solemnly, followed by wheeling gulls. Presently two American sailors, lads of that alert, eager type that is so intensely and honestly American, popped out of a doorway and began to polish bright work.
America was there.
Surely it was one of the finest thoughts of the war to send this squadron of ours. Putting aside for the instant any thought of the squadron as a unit of naval strength, Americans and Britons will do well to consider it rather as a splendid symbol of a union dedicated to the most honourable of purposes, to the defence of that ideal of fraternity and international good faith now menaced. They say that when the American squadron came steaming into the fleet's more northern base one bitter winter day, cheer after cheer broke from the British vessels as they passed, till even the forlorn, snow-covered land rang with the shouting.
It has recently been announced that our battleship squadron is under the command of Admiral Hugh Rodman, which announcement the Germans must have taken to heart, for Admiral Rodman is a man of action if ever one there was. Tall, strongly built, vigorous and alert, he dominates whatever group he happens to find himself in by sheer force of personality. It would fare ill with a German who brought his fleet under the sweep of those keen eyes. Admiral Rodman is a Kentuckian, and a union of blue grass and blue sea is pretty hard to beat, especially when accompanied by a shrewd sense of humour.
I talked with Admiral Rodman about the squadron and its work.
"Always remember," said he, "that this squadron is not over here, as somebody put it, 'helping the British.' Nor are we 'coöperating' with the British fleet. Such ideas are erroneous, and would mislead your readers. Think of this great fleet which you see here as a unit of force, controlled by one ideal, one spirit and one mind, and of the American squadron as an integral part of that fleet. Take, as an instance of what I mean, the change in our signalling system. We came over here using the American system of signals. Well, we could not have two sets of signals going, so in order to get right into things, we learned the British signals, and it's the British system we are using to-day.... There are American ships here and British ships but only one fleet.
Everywhere I went, I found both British and American officers keen to emphasize this unity. Said a Briton—-"Why we no longer think of the Americans of 'the Americans'; we think of squadron X of the fleet. It's just wonderful the way your chaps have got down to business and fallen in with the technique and the traditions. We expected to see you spend some time getting into the life of the fleet and all that, you know; the sort of thing that a boy in a public school goes through before he gets the spirit and the ways of the place, but your people came along in the morning and had picked up everything by the afternoon." And I found the Americans proud of the fleet's essential oneness, proud to share in its great tradition, and to be a part of its history. America is taking no obscure place. Her hosts have given her the place of honour in the battle line.