Deeply moved by these experiences I next accosted a brawny stoker covered with the grime of his calling. "The life seems to suit you all right," I cried, and slapped him on the back. The result was noteworthy. He made absolutely no reply of any sort but spat over the side.
And finally I must tell the story of the trawler and the mine. We all heard it, and most of the best people are telling it. It reveals better than anything perhaps the spiritual depths. It was related by an officer who had taken charge of our party and who actually showed us a photograph of the mine in question in a little museum of relics he had established on the quay, which contained also a part of a chronometer, said to be German, and a loaf of potato bread, captured and brought home under conditions that will make a stirring story after the War. The mine had been towed in by a fisherman who had flung a rope round its horns. "Cool hand, that fisherman," the narrator concluded. (It is only fair to say that in some versions given to the public the expression is set down as "Offhand chap" or "Careless old card," but I believe these to be incorrect.) "He said it must be safe enough for he had towed it for fourteen miles." (There has been some little discrepancy as to the mileage also, one sensational writer in the Yellow Press even putting it as high as nineteen.)
A wonderful week! It is folly to draw great conclusions from a hasty visit. All the same this is my considered message to the British Public—Trust the Trawlers.
Bis.
S.O.S.
"We may indeed say with another meaning, Sos monumentum requiras circumspice."—The Builder.
Hun Candour.
From a description of Czernowitz in the Berliner Tageblatt:—