Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/194

176 generation. Day after day the poor subchasers, coated with ice almost a foot thick, many with their engines wrecked, their planking torn and their propellers crumpled, were towed into the harbour and left at the first convenient mooring, where the ice immediately began to freeze them in. As was inevitable under such conditions, the crews, for the most part, suffered acutely in this terrible weather; they had had absolutely no training in ordinary seamanship, to say nothing of the detailed tactics demanded by the difficult work in which they were to engage.

I do not think that the whole lot contained 1 per cent, of graduates of Annapolis or 5 per cent, of experienced sailors; for the greater number that terrible trip in the icy ocean, with the thermometer several degrees below zero, and with very little artificial heat on board, was their first experience at sea. Yet there was not the slightest sign of whimpering or discouragement. Ignorant of salt water as these men at that time were, they really represented about the finest raw material in the nation for this service, practically all, officers and men, were civilians; a small minority were amateur yachtsmen, but the great mass were American college undergraduates. Boys of Yale, Harvard, Princeton indeed, of practically every college and university in the land had dropped their books, left the comforts of their fraternity houses, and abandoned their athletic fields, eager for the great adventure against the Hun. If there is any man who still doubts what the American system of higher education is doing for our country, he should have spent a few days at sea with these young men. That they knew nothing at first about navigation and naval technique was not important; the really important fact was that their minds were alert, their hearts filled with a tremendous enthusiasm for the cause, their souls clean, and their bodies ready for the most exhausting tasks. Whenever I get to talking of the American college boys and other civilians in our navy, I find myself indulging in what may seem extravagant praise. I have even been inclined to suggest that it would be well, in the training of naval officers in future, to combine a college education with a shorter intensive technical course at the Naval Academy. For these college men have what technical academies do not usually succeed in giving a general education and a