The first time that I was in Bermuda, a German Training Squadron arrived, with a number of naval cadets on board, and announced their intention of remaining ten days. The German officers at once exhibited a most un-Teutonic keenness about sea-fishing. The Governor, fully alive to the advantage a possibly hostile power might reap from an independent survey and charting of the tortuous and difficult ship-channel between St. George's and the Dockyard, at once held a consultation with the Senior Naval Officer, in the Admiral's absence, and, as a result of this consultation, three naval petty officers were detailed to show the Germans the best fishing-grounds. At the same time naval patrol boats displayed a quite unusual activity inside the reefs. Both patrol boats and petty officers had their private orders, and I fancy that these steps resulted in very few soundings being taken, and in the ship-channel remaining uncharted by our German visitors. I was returning myself, after dark, in the ferry-boat plying between the Dockyard and Hamilton, when there were four German officers on the bridge. Imagining themselves secure in the general ignorance of their language, they were openly noting the position of the leading lights, as the little steamer threaded her way through the smaller islands and "One rock" and "Two rock passage," and all these observations were, I imagine, duly entered in their pocket-books after landing. In conversation with the German officers I was much struck with the essentially false ideas that they had with regard to the position of the motherland and her dependencies. They seemed convinced that every Dominion and dependency was merely waiting for the first favourable opportunity to declare its complete independence, and they hardly troubled to conceal their opinion that Britain was hopelessly decadent, and would never be able to wage a campaign again. Bermuda, in view of its wonderful strategic position, had, I am convinced, been marked down as a future German possession, when they would have endeavoured to make a second Heligoland of it.
Nowhere could a little population be found more loyal to the motherland than in Bermuda, or prouder of its common heritage.
A friend of mine, a lady who had never left the islands, wrote some lines which I thought so fine that I set them to music. Her words, though, are so much better than my setting, that I will quote them in full.
THE SONG OF THE BERMUDIANS THE KEEPERS OF THE WESTERN GATE
Queen of the Seas! Thou hast given us the Keys,
Proudly do we hold them, we thy Children and akin,
Though we be nor rich nor great,
We will guard the Western Gate,
And our lives shall pay the forfeit ere we let the foeman in.
Empty are our hands, for we have nor wealth nor lands,
No grain or gold to give thee, and so few a folk are we;
Yet in very will and deed,
We will serve thee at thy need,
And keep thine ancient fortalice beyond the Western Sea.
The sea is at our doors, and we front its fretted floors,
Swept by every wind that listeth, ringed with reefs from rim to rim,
Though we may not break its bars,
Yet by light of sun or stars
Our hearts are fain for England, and for her our eyes are dim.
Sweet Mother, ponder this, lest thy favour we should miss;
We, the loneliest and least of all thy peoples of the sea.
With bared heads and proud
We bless thy name aloud,
For gift of lowly service, as we guard the gate for thee.
Those lines, to me, have a fine ring about them. The words, "In very will and deed, We will serve thee at thy need," were not a mere empty boast, as the splendid record of little Bermuda in the years of trouble from 1914 to 1918 shows, when almost every man of military age, whether white or coloured, voluntarily crossed the Atlantic to help the motherland in her need; so let us wish all success to the sun-kissed, cedar-clad little islands, and to their genial inhabitants.