Worlds War Events - Volume 3 | Page 6

as a
hornet to find me so sleek, while you at home have done all the
thinning down. Truth to tell, if you compare our relative peace and war
status, you are much more at war than I am.
[Sidenote: The highest form of courage.]
If you find son timid in some things, just remember that I was, too.
Lots of things he will change about automatically. At his age I had
small love for fire-crackers or explosives of any kind, but in two or
three years, and without any prompting, I became really expert in guns
and gunpowder. Try to get him to realize that the very highest form of

courage is to be afraid to do a thing--and do it!
AUGUST 3.
[Sidenote: U-boat score against destroyers is zero.]
Once in a while some one of us gets a torpedo fired at him, and only
luck or quick seamanship saves him from destruction. Some day the
torpedo will hit, and then the Navy Department will "regret to report."
But the laws of probability and chance cannot lie, and as the total
U-boat score against our destroyers so far is zero, you can figure for
yourself that they will have to improve somewhat before the Kaiser can
hand out many iron crosses at our expense.
[Sidenote: Picking up survivors.]
We had a new experience the other day when we picked up two
boatloads of survivors from the ----, torpedoed without warning. I will
say they were pretty glad to see us when we bore down on them. As we
neared, they began to paddle frantically, as though fearful we should be
snatched away from them at the last moment. The crew were mostly
Arabs and Lascars, and the first mate, a typical comic-magazine
Irishman, delivered himself of the following: "Sure, toward the last,
some o' thim haythen gits down on their knees and starts calling on
Allah; but I sez, sez I, 'Git up afore I swat ye wid the axe-handle, ye
benighted haythen; sure if this boat gits saved 't will be the Holy Virgin
does it or none at all, at all! Git up,' sez I."
[Sidenote: The deep sea breeds a certain fineness of character.]
The officers were taken care of in the ward-room--rough unlettered old
sailormen, who possessed a certain fineness of character which I
believe the deep sea tends to breed in those who follow it long enough.
I have known some old Tartars greatly hated by those under them, but
to whom a woman or child would take naturally.
What you say about my possibly being taken prisoner both amuses and
touches me. The former because it seems so highly unlikely a

contingency. Submarines do not take prisoners if they can help it, and
least of all from a man-of-war. But I have often thought of just what I
should do in such a case, and I have decided that it would be far better
to die than to submit to certain things. In which case, I should use my
utmost ingenuity to take along one or two adversaries with me.
AUGUST 11.
[Sidenote: The case for universal conscription.]
So the boys at home don't all take kindly to being conscripted, eh? Well,
I wish for a lot of reasons that the conscription might be as complete
and far-reaching as it is in, for instance, France. I think for one thing
that universal conscription is the final test of democracy. Again, I think
it would do every individual in the nation good to find out that there
was something a little bit bigger than he--something that neither money,
nor politics, nor obscurity, nor the Labor Union, nor any one else could
help him to wriggle out of. It would go far towards disillusioning those
many who seem to feel that they do not have to take too seriously a
government because they have helped to create it.
[Sidenote: Not a question of courage but of mental process.]
While I have precious little sympathy for slackers of any variety, one
must not judge them too harshly because their minds do not happen to
work the same as ours. In nine cases out of ten it is not a question of
courage, but one of mental process. Some people come of a caste to
whom war or the idea of fighting for their country is second nature.
They take it for granted, like death and taxes. If they ever permitted
themselves seriously to question the rightness of it; to submit patriotism
and courage to an acid analysis, they might suddenly turn arrant
cowards. How much harder is it, then, for people who have never even
faced the idea of it before to be suddenly placed up against the actual
fact!
AUGUST 18.
I have been having a