Page:Admirals of the British Navy.djvu/63

 INTRODUCTION PART II. A""^HE first thing a landlubber does when he opens his mouth about the sea or about sea power is to put his foot in it ; and therefore one's sense of decency in approaching this pro- cession of illustrious admirals, headed by Sir David Beatty, compels one to put oneself in a posture of reverent trepidation and respectful humility. The man of words in time of war ought to prostrate himself before the man of action. He ought to order himself lowly and reverently before and very much below his betters. In his case judgment or even criticism is an outrageous impertinence. He knows little about war by land and even less about war by sea. Any enlargement of his knowledge is only a microscopical diminution of his ignorance. The sea is a mystery, unveiled only to those who go down to (or in) the sea in ships. Sailors tolerate our immeasurable ignorance, for they rejoice in the sense of humour which the sea seems to enrich and expand. It is many years since a mischievous midshipman cajoled me into climbing the mast of H.M.S. " Majestic," then flying the flag of Sir Harry Rawson. Until I went up in an aeroplane at St. Omer I never drank more deeply of the cup of terror. That midshipman, for all I know, may now be one of these grave admirals with smiles lurking at the corners of their eyes and lips. It is a far cry from the naval manoeuvres of the " 'nineties ' to the " real thing " of 1918, but the impulse to hark back to those mimic battles is irresistible. My first and last misdemeanour was the striking of a match on the paint of a casemate. The memory of it even now makes me blush from nape to heel, and warns me that nearly everything a landlubber may say about the Navy is as the striking of a match on the wrong place at the wrong time on a Victorian man o' war. And yet those far-off days in wardroom and gunroom, on navigating bridge and quarter-deck, helped me to drink the pure milk of the Navy word. No man who has watched a blinded battle fleet keeping station on a pitch-black night, or whose head has grown giddy in the mazes of a cruiser action, or who has seen a destroyer attack pushed home in the dark, or who has seen the drifters coming in coated with ice, can fail to feel in his bones the thrill of sea-power. To such a man there comes at all moments the salt warning, " Put not your trust only in* armies. For England there is but one supreme war-faith, the creed of the sea."