And of course, the Navy won. Over the heads of the vanishing crowd floated,
Give 'em the axe, the axe, the axe,
Where? Where? Where?
Right in the neck, the neck, the neck,
There! There! There!
Who gets the axe?
ARMY
Who says so!
NAVY
It ends with a roar.
Then there is a celebration, and the next morning, his holiday over, Jack is rounded up, and put into a railway carriage. The roofs of London die away, and Jack, dozing over his magazines, sees in a dream the great grey shapes of the battleships that wait for him in the endless northern rain.
XXIX
THE ARMED GUARD
When the Germans began to sink our unarmed merchant vessels, and announced that they intended to continue that course of action, it was immediately seen that the only possible military answer to this infamous policy lay in arming every ship. There were obstacles, however, to this defensive programme. We were at the time engaged in what was essentially a legal controversy with the Germans, a controversy in which the case of America and civilization was stated with a clarity, a sincerity, and a spirit of idealism which perhaps only the future can justly appreciate. We could not afford to weaken our case by involving in doubt the legal status of the merchantman. The enemy, driven brilliantly point by point from the pseudo-legal defences of an outrageous campaign, had taken refuge in quibbling, "the ship was armed," "a gun was seen," "such vessels must be considered as war vessels." We all know the sorry story. For a while, our hands were tied. Then came our declaration of war which left our Navy free to take protective measures. The merchantmen were fitted with guns, and given crews of Navy gunners. This service, devoted to the protection of the merchant ship, was known as the Armed Guard.
It was not long before tanker and tramp, big merchantman and grimy collier sailed from our ports fully equipped. Vessels whose helplessness before the submarine had been extreme, the helplessness of a wretched sparrow gripped in the talons of a hawk, became fighting units which the submarine encountered at her peril. Moreover, finding it no longer easy to sink ships with gunfire, the submarines were forced to make greater use of their torpedoes, and this in turn compelled them to attempt at frequent intervals the highly dangerous voyage to the German bases on the Belgian coast. Sometimes the gun crews were British; sometimes American. The coöperation between the two Navies was at once friendly and scientific.
The guns with which the vessels were equipped were of the best, and the gun crews were recruited from the trained personnel of the fleet. One occasionally hears, aboard the greater vessels, lamentations for gunners who have been sent on to the Guard. These crews consisted of some half-dozen men usually under the command of a chief petty officer. A splendid record, theirs. They have been in action time and time again against the Germans, and have destroyed submarines. There is many a fine tale in the records of crews who kept up the battle till the tilt of their sinking vessel made the firing of the gun an impossibility. So far, the gunners on the merchant ships have come in for the lion's share of attention. But there is another and important side of the Armed Guard service which has not yet, I believe, been called to the public notice. I mean the work of the signal men of the Guard.