There is not a great deal that I can add to this comprehensive summary of the way work and play have been administered with such success in maintaining the moral of the men of the Grand Fleet. The show in the "theatre ship" that night I found well worth the wet launch trip in a sloppy sea. It consisted of two parts of varieties and one of burlesque. Most of the numbers had been under rehearsal for several weeks, and the whole affair went off with all the aplomb of a London Revue. No "accessories"—from posters to programmes—were missing, not even the Censor.
An officer sitting next me, calling my attention to the blank back of the programme, said that he had written some "advertisements" to fill it, but that the Censor had banned them at the last moment as "not proper." As a matter of fact, there was far less in the whole show played by men to men, as it was, to "bring a blush to the cheek" than in the average West End Revue. A certain "chilliness" in the atmosphere of the auditorium, due to the fact that it was situated immediately over one of the refrigerating chambers, was more than neutralised by the warm reception the packed audience gave the show from the opening chorus to "God Save the King."
I managed to spend a few minutes at the nightly kinema show on several battleships. All of the available seats were invariably packed, with the enthusiasm tremendous, especially for the "knock-about" pictures. Charlie Chaplin appeared to be a ten-to-one favourite over any one else—both in the Ward Rooms and in the Lower Decks—and the demand for films in which he figured was a good deal greater than the available supply. The "sentimental" Mary Pickford sort of films were rather more popular than the men cared to show by their applause, but the harrowing "suffering-mother-and-child" subjects they would have none of. A rather poor film of Rider Haggard's She which I saw was very coldly received by both men and officers. The Official War films of all of the Allies were always sure of a rousing reception. A special treat was the picture of the King's recent visit to the Grand Fleet, which offered men and officers the exciting sport of "finding" themselves on various sectors of it. Travel films were in little demand, the reason for which was perhaps supplied by one of my "coaling-mates," who said that the only kind of travel "movie" that he was interested in was the woods of Scotland running north at sixty miles an hour past the window of his homebound train.
Besides the more or less organised forms of work and play, many of the men in the Fleet have some sort of a hobby to which they turn in the rare intervals which might otherwise be spent in "thumb-twirling" and "thinking," those twin enemies of "The Contented Sailor." Thousands of men "make things"—not the old ship-in-a-bottle seaside bar ornament sort, but objects of real usefulness. One officer had become a specialist on electrical heating contrivances, and had equipped the wardroom with cigar-lighters to work with the ship's "juice" and save matches. Another was making his own golf clubs, and I heard of a Captain of Royal Marines of noble lineage who had fabricated a very "wearable" pair of Norwegian ski-boots. There are so many skilled artisans among the men that one is not surprised to see them making almost anything; nevertheless, the gunner of one of the battleships who—with the sole exception of the lens—made a complete kinema projecting machine, did a very creditable piece of work.
Some of the senior Naval Officers have gone in for stock-breeding, overflowing to the land in their endeavours to find room to expand. Pig-raising is the most popular line, and there is great rivalry between the several "sty proprietors." A certain distinguished sailor—his name is a byword to the English people—discoursed learnedly to me for fifteen minutes on the strategy of the Battle of Jutland, and then, turning to a visiting officer, spoke with equal facility, and even greater enthusiasm, of his success in crossing the "China Poland" with the "Ordinary Orkney" to increase (or was it to reduce?) the "streak" in the bacon. He called the new breed the "Chinorkland," or something like that, and if the fact that he was planning three or four generations ahead conveys anything as to the view the Navy takes regarding the duration of the war, my readers—with the Censor's indulgence—are welcome to the tip.
[THE HEALTH OF THE FLEET]
It was a great day for the Principal Medical Officer. In spite of the fact that there were nearer 1200 than 1100 men in his ship, the returns of "Sick" and "Hospital" cases had been recorded by successive "pairs of spectacles" for several days. Even a single twenty-four hours like that for a battleship on active service was worthy of remark, and three or four days of it undoubtedly constituted a record for the British or any other Navy. That the clean sheet would be spread over a whole week was almost too much to hope for, even after the sixth day of the double duck's eggs had gone by. But now the morning of the seventh day had come, the last of a week in which there had been no case of sickness in a ship which carried one of the largest, if not the largest, complement of men in the British Navy. It was no wonder that the P.M.O.'s eyes were beaming, and that he shook hands all round with his Staff Assistants, for it was an achievement which might well stand as a record for many a year.
"Since you do not appear likely to be troubled with anything worse than a rush of congratulations to-day, sir," I said, after extending my own felicitations, "perhaps you'll have time to tell me how you've done it. I've heard fine tributes paid the R.N.M.S. by French, American, and Italian doctors who know something of it, but I was hardly prepared to find you starting a sort of Ponce de Leon 'Fountain of Perpetual Youth,' in the British Fleet."