Worlds War Events - Volume 3 | Page 5

we have a submarine scare,
I feel markedly better for a while--it seems to reëstablish my sense of
proportion.
It is a mighty nerve- and temper-wearing life--at sea nearly all the time
and with the boat rolling and bucking like a broncho, you can't exercise.
You can hardly do any work, but only hold on tight and wipe the salt
spray from your eyes. Sometimes I have started to shave and found the
salt so thick on my face that soap would not lather.
JULY 16.
[Sidenote: Time is passed navigating, standing watch, sleeping.]
Things are the same as before with us. Time passes quickly, with
navigating, standing watch and sleeping when you get a chance. One
day or two passes all too quickly. I wish there were more to do in the
shape of relaxation when we do get ashore. The people here are cordial
enough, according to their lights, but those that we meet are practically
all Army and Navy people, who have no abode here themselves and are
almost as much strangers as we are; and there is no resident population
of that caste that would ordinarily open its doors to foreign naval
officers.
[Sidenote: Little for diversion in Ireland.]
Ireland is a poor country comparatively. A town of 50,000 here shows
less in the way of facilities for diversion than the average town of

10,000 in the States.
[Sidenote: Mental privations hurt more than physical ones.]
Don't worry about my privations--"which mostly there ain't none."
Such as they are, they are necessary and unavoidable; and, above all,
we are fitted for them. You can't well sympathize with a man who is
doing the thing he has longed for and trained for all his life. Besides,
physical privations are nothing; it is the mental ones that hurt. A soldier
in the trenches, with little to eat and nothing but a hole to sleep in, can
feel happy all the same--particularly if life has something in prospect
for him if he lives. But a man out of work at home, sleeping in the park
and panhandling for food, is much more to be pitied, though his
immediate hardships may be no greater.
The weather over here is very passable at present, but they say it is
simply hell off the coast in winter. However, somebody said the war
will be over in November. I hope the Kaiser and Hindenburg know it,
too!
JULY 26.
[Sidenote: Anxious to be in action.]
I haven't done anything heroic, which irks me. We would like to get in
on the ground floor, while all hands are in a receptive mood, and before
the Plattsburgers and other such death-defying supermen make it too
common.
JULY 22.
[Sidenote: A cheerful letter from home.]
Your two letters of July 7 and 8 came this afternoon, but I got the latter
first and expected from what you said in contrition that there was hot
stuff--gas-attack followed by bayonet-work--in the former; therefore I
was all the more ashamed to find you had dealt so leniently and
squarely with me. Why didn't you come back with a long invoice of

troubles of your own, as 99 per cent of women would? Evidently you
are the one-per-cent woman. I bitterly regretted my whines after having
written them, for their very untruth. Alas, how many people think the
world is drab-colored and life a failure, and so have done or said
something they regret all their lives, when a vegetable pill or a brisk
walk would have changed their vision completely! Why is it that
people sometimes deliberately hurt those they have loved most in the
world? I suppose it is because we are all really children at heart and
want some one else to cry too. The other day Smith shamefacedly
abstracted from the mail-box a letter to his wife, and tore it up, and I
know--oh, I know!
At a husbands' meeting on the ship the other day, we all agreed that the
heavy hand was the only way to deal with women; but it seemed on
investigation that no one had actually tried it the reason being
apparently a well-grounded fear that our wives wouldn't like it.
[Sidenote: Danger, but little action or variety.]
This war hasn't had as much action, variety, and stimulation for us as I
would like. Danger there always is, but being little in evidence, you
have to prod your nerves to realize it rather than soothe them down.
Lately, however, things have changed in a manner which, though
involving no more danger, furnishes a somewhat greater mental
stimulation, and thence is better for everybody. I regret to say that I am
gaining in weight. It was my hope to come back thin and gaunt and
interesting-looking. Instead of which, you will likely be mad