PROBLEMS AND PLACES
In 1884 I kept a diary--kept it the entire year. It was written in the
straggling characters of a child of ten. As I peruse it now,
twenty-five years afterward, I am struck not so much with what it
records, as with what it leaves unrecorded. The great places visited
and the names of great men are chronicled, Bible studies and religious
observations find a place--but of the fierce struggle of the human
soul with destructive and corrupting influences, not a word!
The itinerary of the year included Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy,
Syria, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete and Sicily. Of these Syria was of the
greatest interest to me. Of the men whose pathway crossed mine,
General Gordon was of the most importance; of the others, the King of
Greece and the second son of Victoria were unique, but not
interesting. One in my position could only meet them as a flunky meets
his master, anyway.
Gordon, on his way to his doom in the Soudan, disembarked at
Alexandria. It was early in January. There was no parade, no reception
of any kind. Gordon was dressed in plain clothes with a cane in his
hand. Gladstone had sent him thus to bring order out of chaos in the
Land of the Mad Mullah. Officers with a penchant for religious
propaganda are scarce either in the army or navy, but into whatever
part of the world Gordon went, he was known and recognized and sought
after by men engaged in religious work. It was an officer of the Royal
Naval Temperance Society, who was at the same time a naval petty
officer, who said to me on the wharf at Alexandria--"That's Chinese
Gordon!"
"Where is he going?" I asked.
"Down the Nile to civilize niggers who are dressed in palm oil and
mosquitoes," was the answer. A year later Gladstone sent an army and
spent millions of money to bring him back, but it was too late.
While lying off Piræus, the seaport of Athens, I was doing guard duty
on deck in the first watch. I was substitute for a comrade who had
gone to visit the ancient city. There had been an informal dinner, and
there were whispers among the men that some high mogul was in the
Admiral's cabin. Toward the close of the first watch I was joined on
my beat by a man in plain clothes, who, with a lighted cigar in his
mouth, marched fore and aft the star-board side of the ship with me.
In anticipation of entering Greek waters, I had read for months, and
this stranger was astonished to find a common soldier so well informed
on the history of Greece. I had not yet been ashore, but I had
arranged to go the following day. The gentleman, on leaving, handed me
a card on which he had pencilled what I think was an introduction. I
had only time to ask him his name, and he said, "George--just George."
Next day I discovered I had been pow-wowing with a king. The effect on
me was almost as bad as a successful go with the gloves. The Channel
Squadron, flying the flag of the Duke of Edinburgh, entered Malta
Harbour that year, and for some weeks the combined fleets lay moored
alongside each other. The Royal Admiral was a frequent visitor to our
ship. On one of these visits I had the experience of serving him with
luncheon. He was the guest of our skipper. During the luncheon I
handed him a note from his Flag Lieutenant. A dealer in mummies had
come aboard with some samples. They were spread out on the
quarter-deck. The note related the facts, but the Queen's son was not
impressed, and said so.
[Illustration: A Page from Mr. Irvine's Diary.
Kept while serving on H.M.S. _Alexandra_]
"Tell him," said he, "to go to ---- Oh, wait a moment"; then he
pencilled his reply on the back of a note and handed it to me. When
the Flag Lieutenant read it, he laughed, tore it up and handed the
pieces to me. The Duke's reply read--"He may go to the D---- with the
whole boiling. A."
Right off the coast of Sicily, we encountered a bit of rough water,
and Commander Campbell, a seaman of the old school, took advantage of
it for sail drill.
"Strike lower yards and top masts," was the order, "and clear the
decks for action!"
"Away aloft!" he roared, as the wind soughed through the rigging, and
a moment later I heard--"Bear out on the yard-arm!"
Something went wrong in the foretop that day, and its captain fell to
the hatchway grating below. I was standing a few feet from the spot,
and it took me the best part of the day to sponge his blood out of my
clothing. We stopped the evolution for a day, and the following day
another man was killed performing the same drill, and we buried them
both that afternoon in the old cemetery at the base of Mt. Etna. At
noon on the third day the ship was ordered to go through the same
evolution. Meantime a petty officer named Hicks had been promoted
captain of the foretop. He was one of the finest men in the ship. He
could dance a hornpipe, sing a good song, make a splendid showing with
the gloves or single-sticks; was something of a wag, and when he
laughed the deck trembled. His promotion was not wholly a thing of
joy, for the superstition of the sea gripped him tight. He was the
third man, and to most of us the number had an evil omen. Within an
hour after his promotion, the red flush had gone from his cheeks. He
was silent and managed to be alone most of the afternoon and evening
of that day. He had been a signal boy and was an expert in the
language of flags and in flashing the electric light. He was unable
to sleep and passed most of the night on deck with the sentries. It
was noticed that he begged permission to "monkey" with the
electric-light signalling apparatus aft on the poop. When we began the
sail drill the following day, the attention of every man on the ship
was focused on the captain of the foretop, and at the order--"Away
aloft!" he sprang at the rigging like a cat. We stood from under.
There was a breathless hush as the second order was given--"Bear out
on the yard-arm!" It was the fatal order at which the other men had
lost their nerve and their lives! As it rang out over the old ship, we
gulped down our lumps and secretly thanked Him in the hollow of whose
hand lie the seas. The evolution was completed, and when the man of
the foretop descended to the deck, half a dozen men gripped Hicks, and
hugged him and kissed him with tears in their eyes.
Something really did happen in the foretop that day--something
happened to its captain, though nobody knew just what it was. He came
to the deck a changed man, and those who knew him best, felt it most.
We could not analyze it--he could not himself. I got into the secret
by accident. Some weeks later, it may have been months, an officer
from another ship was lunching with a friend in our wardroom. I served
the lunch and overheard the following conversation:
"Have you a signal man by the name of Hicks--Billy Hicks--on board?"
"Yes, what about him?"
"Well," the officer said, smiling, "we were ten miles out at sea a few
weeks ago when I noticed the signals flashing all over the heavens. I
was officer of the deck. It was about seven bells in the first watch.
I called my signal officer, told him to take down what he read." He
pulled out his notebook, still smiling and, spelling out the words,
read:
"_God this is Billy Hicks. I ain't afraid of no bloomin' man nor
devil. I ain't afraid of no Davey Jones bleedin' locker neither. I
ain't like a bawlin baby afussin' at his dad for sweeties. I doant ask
you for no favours but just one. This is it--when I strike the foretop
to-morrow let me do it with the guts of a man what is clean and God
dear God from this here day on giv me the feeling I use to have long
ago when I nelt at my mother's knee an said Our Father. Good night
dear God._"
I went out into the pantry of the wardroom, jotted down as much of
this as I could remember, and it gave me a splendid introduction to
the captain of the foretop.
The greatest problem of my life, and perhaps of any life at the age of
twenty-one, was the problem of sex instinct. I have often wondered why
that problem is discussed so meagrely. I have often wondered why, for
instance, Kipling and Frank Bullen and W. Clark Russell, in discussing
the life of soldiers and sailors with whom this is a specialized
problem, have not frankly discussed the terrific battle that every
full-blooded man must fight on this question.
The moment I arrived in that foreign port I was overwhelmed with a
sense of personal freedom. There I was, with a splendid physical
organization that had just come into its own, and around me in the mess
and on the ship's deck and on the streets of the cities--everywhere--I
heard nothing else but conversation on this problem. To nine out of
every ten men it was a joke. It was laughed at, played with, and I
knew, of course, that young men of my own age were being smashed on the
rocks of this problem.
The British Navy serves out once or twice a week a ration, which is
one of the biggest jokes of naval life. It is a small ration of lime
juice, and the rumoured purpose of it is to modify in some degree this
tremendous natural sex instinct. To most of us it was like spitting on
a burning building--the battle went on fiercer every day of life! I
tackled it from two points of view; first, the moral point of view. My
religion demanded purity, continence and self-mastery. The other point
of view--I don't think this was clear to me at the time; I don't
believe that I intentionally pursued this course with the object in
view that it actually accomplished; nevertheless, whether intentional
or unintentional, planned or unplanned, the effect was produced. The
physical work required of me was light, very light, and all my leisure
time was spent in study. I studied so hard and so conscientiously that
I tired not only my mind, but my body. There came a time when I was
dimly conscious, however, that I was doing two things by hard study: I
was preserving my body, conserving my vital energy, and at the same
time training my mind, gathering information and equipping myself
intellectually. At the present moment my body is as lithe, as powerful
and as enduring as the body of a youth of twenty, and I attribute this
wealth of health to the fact that twenty-five years ago, I tackled
this problem of self-mastery and laid the foundations for my present
strength.
Who will give the world a novel or a book dealing with this terrific
problem? Who will tell millions of young men around the age of twenty
that they cannot burn their candle at both ends? With the ordinary man
in civil life the temptation is a negligible quantity compared to the
life of a soldier or sailor. In the army and navy it is talked
incessantly so that a man has a double battle to fight. He fights the
thing and he fights a multitude of suggestions that come to him every
day of his life.
The most revolting, disgusting and degrading thing I ever heard talked
about on a man o' war was the perversion of the sex instinct--the
unnatural use of it! This, too, is a joke and laughed at and talked
lightly about; but the records of the British Navy, and I think of
other navies, would reveal something along this line that would shock
civilization. I did not believe this possible, but the first six
months on board changed my mind.
To the great credit of the British Navy, be it said that this crime is
held almost equal to murder, and when an officer is convicted of it,
the trial is _in camera_, and the findings kept secret; but no matter
how high his rank, he is stripped of his standing and marched over the
side of the ship as a degraded criminal and an outcast. A man of the
ranks convicted of it usually spends the rest of his natural life in
prison.
The two things responsible for such perversion in the navy are: first,
the herding of the male sex together and for long periods; second, the
mode of dress in which little boys begin their sea life. These are the
problems before which all others sink into utter insignificance. The
army and navy of Great Britain, is recruited very largely from the
slums of great cities. The most ignorant, the most brutal and most
immoral of mankind are drafted by the incentive of a better life than
they have ever known; but they are only changed outwardly. Their
nature, their habits of life, their mental make-up, does not change;
or, if it changes to the automatic action by which they become part
of a war machine they lose that individual freedom that is the boast
of the Anglo-Saxon race.
On the other hand, I must say that in all my contact with life, I have
never met nor been associated with a group of men more gentlemanly,
better educated, or whose total sum of right thinking and right living
was higher than that group of officers on that ship. I certainly
attribute a great deal of my quickening of mind to contact with them.