Here is yet one more report:
"Owing to the outbreak of the war the Temperance and Bible classes in this ship have been discontinued, but the Daily Prayer Meeting has been kept going in almost unbroken line.
"The voluntary services on Sunday evenings have been well attended, also the weekly celebration of the Holy Communion is very encouraging."
Putting the chaplains' letters and these various reports to the Church Pennant together, it is evident that the "business" of the Church has been, so far as possible, carried on "as usual," and that from a Church of England point of view it has been satisfactory.
It does not, however, satisfy us. We want to get into the men's hearts and minds and find out what they are feeling and thinking in these strenuous times. Does the thought of death affect them? Have the things of eternity become more real? Are they conscious of sin within, and of their need of a Saviour? Light-hearted and merry as ever, have they the joy of the Lord?
All around them are terrible armaments. We are told that the 15-inch guns of the new Queen Elizabeth can send a shell weighing a ton for a distance of more than twenty miles. The destruction which can be wrought by one of these shells can be imagined when we read of the havoc wrought by one such shell in one of the great forts of Antwerp. It was not, of course, from a man-of-war, but its destructive force would be the same. Says Sir Cecil Hertslet, our late Consul-General at Antwerp:
"Another of these great shells, weighing nearly a ton, fired from a distance of about ten miles, rising three miles into the air, fell upon the cupola of another of the great outer forts of Antwerp. It went through the concrete roof of the fort, passed through the great hall where the garrison of the fort was assembled; it went down to the floor and lower still, and at last exploded, and with the explosion swept away everything—forts, guns, garrison, disappearing."
Are they conscious that they have such terrible engines of destruction on board which on occasion they will use? Does the thought of it ever appal them? Do they think that all around them are mines strewing the North Sea, and that submarines are lurking here and there waiting to launch the terrible torpedo? Do these thoughts ever come to a Jack Tar, and how do they affect him?
