"We will see. I know it will be an escort I do not like to take a chance with."
The Lieutenant fidgeted awhile, his glasses at his eyes. His Captain looked at his profile and at the glint of perspiration on the slightly shaking hands, and yawned. His face, as he swung round again to scan the horizon astern, looked bored and perhaps a little lonely. A submarine is a small ship in which to coop up incompatible natures, and the terrible losses of personnel in the Imperial submarine service had sadly reduced the standard of officers. He felt sometimes as if he were an anachronism, an officer of nineteen-fourteen who had miraculously lasted four years. He felt that it had been only the fact that a misdemeanour had caused him to be driven forth to the big ships for two years that had saved him from sharing the unknown fate of his contemporaries. Well, he reflected, it was only a matter of time before he would join them. The law of averages was stronger than his luck, wonderful though the latter had been. He extracted a cigar from his case and reached out a hand to take his subordinate's proffered matchbox. As he did so he glanced again at his companion's face, and a sudden feeling of understanding, and perhaps a touch of compassion, made him ask—
"Well, Müller? You have something that worries you. What is it, then?"
The First Lieutenant turned and took a careful glance round the circle of empty ocean. Then his speech came with a rush—
"I want to know what you think, sir. You don't seem to worry about it. I know you can do nothing more—that one can only do one's work as best one can and all that—but I still feel restless. How is it going to end? We are winning? Yes—oh yes, we are winning, but we have done that four years, and how far have we got? Before I came into submarines I believed all they told us, but now I know that we are not strangling England at sea, and that we never can now. What are we going to do next? Is it to go on and on until we have no boats left? Gott! I want to do something that will frighten them—something that will make them understand what we are—something that will make them scream for pity." He paused, gulped, and stared again out to the westward. The Captain straightened himself up against the rail and stretched his arms out in another prodigious yawn.
"My good Müller," he said, "you cannot carry the cares of Germany on your back. Leave that to the Chancellor. One can be sufficiently patriotic by doing one's work and not asking questions that others cannot answer. As to the submarine war—well, blame the men who would not let the Emperor have his way, that hindered him when he would have built an equal fleet to the English. I do not mean the Socialists—I mean others as well. I mean men who grudged money for the Navy because they wanted it for the Army. Curse the Army! If we had had a big fleet we would have won the war in a year, but now—ach! Look now, Müller—you have read Lichnowsky's Memoirs? Yes, I know you are not allowed to, but I know you have. Now I say that what he says at the end is true,—that the Anglo-Saxon race is going to rule the West and the sea, that we shall only rule Middle Europe, and we were fools to play for Middle Europe when we might have had the sea. We would now give all the Russias and Rumania and all our gains just for Gibraltar and Bermuda, for if we had those stations all the rest would come to us. We fight now for our honour, but if it were not for that—and that is everything—we would give our enemies good terms."
"But if that is true—if we can gain no more—we have lost the war!"
The Captain shrugged. "We will have won what we do not want, and lost all that we do; but we shall have won, I suppose. It depends on our diplomatists. If we can get but a few coaling-stations we shall have won, for it would all come to us when we were ready again. But you will not gain a victory by a great stroke as you say you wish, Müller. The war is too big now for single strokes, and the English will not scream for mercy now because of frightfulness. They are angry, and they hate us now."
"But you yourself have sunk a liner, and you showed them as she sank that the orders of Germany must be obeyed."
The Captain's face did not alter at all. "I did do so, and I would do so again. My honour is clear, because I obeyed my orders. Would you have dared to question?"