Isn’t it absurd that after two years’ interval I should again be
passing the 14th of July in the United States? Only, this time you
aren’t here and there’s not the slightest chance of our running into
each other. I wonder if I should find you changed after all this time!
Perhaps I shouldn’t know you any more now that you have shaved off
your moustache in order to be like your brother-officers--you must
have done it for swank, old man, since you got into the Navy List, but
it won’t go down with me! Nor am I the skinny little chap you used to
knock about to see if I could keep my end up. I have a beard like a
missionary and my fiancée says that I have got stouter and that now
I look like a man. So much for my appearance. As for the rest, it’s
even worse. You can well believe that two years of hard labour like
that we have had on the _Pamir_--and all that we have seen and all
that we have heard--such things steady the head. At La Rochelle they
listened to me as if I were an oracle, even the old people, which
is quite different from what it was two years ago. Look here! I’ve
pondered a little, and I now have my own opinions! Before, I was just
happy-go-lucky, I didn’t care a hang for anything, I found everything
perfectly simple as long as I had something to eat and my feet high
and dry on the bridge if we were shipping heavy seas. Now I see more
clearly the whys and the wherefores. I find life’s more complicated,
and there are even times when I really think I might be quite at sea if
I had to run the war myself. It’s age coming--maturity, as they call
it. And so, alas, I realize that the more it goes on the more things
will multiply and increase in difficulty until, if I ever have any real
responsibilities, I shall be much too ancient and too concerned with a
lot of considerations which will hinder me from acting. After two years
of war, there is one conclusion of which I am sure: All the top men and
Grand Panjandrums are too old, and what disgusts me is that it’s ten
to one I’ll become like them. Everyone isn’t like Fourgues, who will
soon be fifty and who can decide in five seconds because he is willing
to take responsibility. But for one like that there are a hundred
nonentities, and the country is suffering from it.
You will wonder if I am having the blues because I tell you this
nonsense instead of the story of the _Pamir_, which, you say, amuses
you. The 14th of July far from France, without a chum with whom to
yarn--it gives me the hump. Fourgues and Villiers--who are really good
fellows--tried to distract me at a music-hall in Baltimore, but I was
bored. And then, hang it all----But I won’t go on. Let’s get back to
the subject.
I was able to get to La Rochelle. We sent you a card, my fiancée and
I. After two weeks at Bilbao, the _Pamir_ was sent to Boucau to unload
her ore. It’s a rotten port where the least swell sets the ship rolling
like the deuce and where the anchorage is bad. Seeing that we should be
long in unloading, as there was no proper plant, Fourgues let me hook
it for La Rochelle and I didn’t stop to ask for details. I was glad
that the train went fast, though I did wonder how long they were going
to keep up this levity of burning coal for people on pleasure-trips
instead of saving it for the soldiers and the armies. When I said that,
I was told that the country would grouse if there were restrictions.
That’s a wretched argument. They will have to come to it sooner or
later, and then the Government will seem to have been forced and not
to have foreseen anything; whereas, if it began at once, no one would
be astonished. There have been other surprises since the war began and
the country can stand being told there are strict orders. Only, to say
that all’s for the best and that we shall never be obliged to do as the
Boches do! At home I saw a lot of friends who told me stories about the
censored papers, saying that things are going well and that we have all
we need and that it will all be over in three or four months. What sort
of fools can such writers be?
* * * * *
They have only to come and see and they’ll see. It’s like the Boche
submarines. On that subject, old man, we of the sea have only to keep
our mouths shut. Everybody knows more about it than we. During the
first two or three days that I was at home, I said what I thought, but
after a while I stopped because they demonstrated to me mathematically
that the submarines were all bluff. All the stories I told of the sea,
of my trips and what I had seen, they listened to attentively and it
was flattering. Even the story of the _Mer-Morte_ was considered very
interesting. Really, it was exactly like servants reading a novel and
asking for sensational details! But when I said that the _Provence_,
the _Ville-de-la-Ciotat_, the _Lusitania_, and the rest were only the
beginning, they called me a pessimist, and told me we were sinking a
lot of submarines, that it was officially stated the Germans wouldn’t
have any more, and, anyway, that only a thousandth of the trade had
been lost, which didn’t amount to anything. The stupidest part of it
was that I was obliged to say the same to my fiancée or she would
have been worried to death. She made me swear to note that submarines
weren’t dangerous and to keep my life-belt on all the time. I swore
all she wanted. When she cries I am helpless. I didn’t tell her that
the _Pamir_ has neither wireless nor guns and isn’t likely to have
them, and that if we run into a submarine all we can do is to blow on
it to see if it will sneeze. As I stayed only five days the papers
were not ready and we couldn’t be married. We decided that it will come
off next time even if I get only forty-eight hours’ leave. I had put
aside fifteen hundred francs, which I gave to her, and she will arrange
everything, furniture and outfit, to set us up in a little house two
or three hundred yards from her parents. Well, old man, though it was
hard to say good-bye at the station, we shall be married before the
year is up, I hope. Fourgues told me that I could count on eight days,
but the unloading was done very quickly at Boucau because the weather
cleared up, and I received a telegram the fifth day, ordering me to
rejoin at Saint-Nazaire double quick. The _Pamir_ was to call there two
days after and would probably sail for America. I was rather astonished
at the destination because the _Pamir_ has the habit now of tubbing it
around Europe; but sailors must be ready for anything.
Marguerite stuffed my bag full of preserves and made a big parcel
of collars and handkerchiefs, socks and shirts. She has embroidered
lovely initials on all of them and added some little silk pocket
handkerchiefs, some coloured braces, and some absolutely ripping
neckties. Dandy Dick, that’s me, old man! Villiers, who puts in all his
spare time at the haberdashers’ collecting multicoloured hosiery, is
dying of envy.
I couldn’t find anybody at Saint-Nazaire; only a letter at the
company’s agency, in which Fourgues told me to report at Boulogne,
the _Pamir_ having been sent there, and that he would expect me the
following Sunday. You can imagine what a mug I felt to have run away
from La Rochelle without having had time to draw breath--and all the
more so as it only gave me forty-eight more hours, not long enough for
me to go home. So I stopped a day in Paris. A bobby hauled me up at
the Nantes station and another in the Paris Tube, to inquire about my
military status. I was in mufti. If I had only known, I should have
made the entire trip in the Company’s uniform, for everyone in France
looks at you askance and says disagreeable things if you’re not in
uniform.
I found the _Pamir_ at Boulogne in the Loubet dock, taking on a
cargo of scrapped _matériel_ from the British front here: wagons,
guns, motor-cars, sheds, and scrap iron, to be repaired in England.
Fourgues explained that the _Pamir_ should have gone to America to get
steel bars for the manufacture of shells in France, but as that order
wouldn’t be ready for a month, they had seized the opportunity to have
us potter around a little in the English Channel. For “pottering” it
was rather important work, seeing that we made two trips each way and
that both times in England we took on from two hundred to two hundred
and fifty brand-new chassis for motor-cars and trolleys for the
Flanders front. The English are beginning to get under way seriously.
They were slow about it, but it’s not the same now as it was when we
were there during the first year of the war. I don’t know how long it’s
going to take them to train their new army and to make soldiers and
officers, but as far as munitions go, there’s no question. You have
no idea of the traffic between England and France. It is coming into
all the ports--Calais, Boulogne, Fécamp, Le Tréport, Dieppe, Le Havre,
Rouen, Caen--without counting the little ones. They are all crowded. As
soon as we arrived in England they got to work, the _Pamir_ was made
fast to a wharf, and they pulled out her cargo and shoved in another.
It took longer in France, although that, too, is a little better now
than last year. Oh, it’s not ideal yet, and one often wonders what all
the empty boats and cars are doing. In four or five years, maybe the
officials and the office-Johnnies will look at their watches instead of
piling up Forms--and Forms--and Forms.
At last we got off for Baltimore with some dozens of cases of French
exports--fabrics, Parisian specialities--nothing much. When I think
that the Germans continue to send their catalogues and merchandise over
the whole world by way of the neutrals, and that the three-thousand-ton
_Pamir_ was sent out with scarcely two or three hundred tons of
cheap stuff, it seems hardly worth while to talk in the papers about
economizing. This little Atlantic trip will have cost the country some
twenty-five thousand francs, some of which she ought to have recovered.
And it’s like that everywhere. They can issue a new loan, but Fourgues
says it’s saving the pennies and wasting billions of pounds.
Villiers and Fourgues have spent their time during the voyage
squabbling at meals, arguing about all that has happened during
the last two or three months: the Irish rebellion, the retreat in
Mesopotamia, the Jutland battle, and the death of Kitchener--to say
nothing of our own troubles.
* * * * *
At first Fourgues was a little overbearing toward Villiers because he
believed Villiers contradicted him just to get his dander up, and two
or three times he told Villiers that that was enough, that he wouldn’t
have him take that tone with him. But this was in the Mediterranean
when Villiers first joined with his neckties and his manicured hands.
But when he put the engine right before you had time to sneeze and now
that everything is going like a dream, Fourgues knows that he can’t
be treated that way because it’s pretty good to have an officer on
whom one can depend. So he asks Villiers’ advice on a lot of technical
matters. But when it comes to their grand discussions of Naval
questions and the politics of the war, they go it hammer and tongs.
At bottom they hold the same views and I am beginning to believe that
they wrangle for fun. Old Villiers has a little way of arguing in a
calm voice, as though he were afraid of disarranging his collar or the
parting of his hair. Fourgues tries to follow suit and says:
“Look here, Villiers, let’s talk this over calmly. We’re not of the
same opinion, but it will do this boy good to hear your arguments.”
The “boy” is I! Ever since Villiers arrived, Fourgues has made me take
a back seat because I haven’t the guts to hold my own with him. And
also at present Fourgues is sick With me for not having got married at
La Rochelle. He says that I am a laggard in love and that next time he
will go to La Rochelle with me and march me straight to the registry
from the train. If that will get me back sooner, I shall be delighted!
So, then, I listen without being obliged to take part. When Villiers is
optimistic, Fourgues says that everything is going to the dogs. When
Villiers is pessimistic, Fourgues says that the Allies haven’t made a
single mistake and that as the Boches haven’t got us yet, we’ve got
them beat and are going to wade right into them. Only, he shouts all
this at the top of his voice because he can’t hold out more than five
minutes in the face of Villiers’ durned coolness.
I believe they have discussed the Jutland affair at every meal, trying
to find out who was beaten, what the results were, etc. Villiers is
friendly with a lot of engineer officers, who, like himself, passed
through the School of the Arts et Métiers and he is also accustomed
to dealing with figures and is very exact. He says that things like
the Jutland affair kick up a dust in the newspapers and in speeches,
but that in fact they are of absolutely no use whatsoever. Fourgues
is for hitting the Germans every time there is a chance, and he says
that if the English had been able to smash the whole German fleet the
war would be almost over. Villiers maintains that this is not true
at all, that even if the big German ships were at the bottom of the
sea, their coasts would still be just as well defended by guns, mines,
submarines, and Zeppelins, and that the English could not get any
nearer than now; he also says that if the Germans had lost all their
big ships, under-sea warfare would not be changed one little bit and
the submarines would give us just as much trouble. Battleships, he
says, are as much ancient history as muzzle-loading cannon; in the
future there won’t be anything but submarines, mines, and light boats
to carry on the real work, as this war has demonstrated.
* * * * *
Although I know Fourgues really agrees, he would reply--just to keep
things going--that as long as one side builds big ships, the other is
obliged to. But Villiers didn’t catch on. He asked by what means the
_Gambetta_, the _Ocean_, the _Cressy_, the _Hogue_, the _Aboukir_, the
_Bouvet_, the _Hampshire_, and all the other big ships were sunk? Not
by big ships, but by torpedoes which cost twenty thousand francs at
most, but which can send battleships costing fifty millions and more
to the bottom. So if for each ship worth fifty millions, twenty-five
submarine torpedo-boats or mine-layers were built, the Allies would
have a thousand, perhaps, and the Germans, with all the Dreadnoughts in
the world, would not dare put their noses out of doors. But inversely,
if the Germans had five hundred or a thousand submarines instead of big
ships, they would make the sea untenable for us. As they are not people
who stick to a thing when they find it’s a dud, they soon tumbled to it
that submarines and mines are the weapons for war at sea and are going
to turn them out like hot cakes. Fourgues repeated this conversation
to me so often that I knew Villiers had shut him up completely, but he
wanted to quibble, so one evening Villiers said to him: “To-morrow I’m
going to bring you an estimate of the cost of the Battle of Jutland
according to official accounts in England at the time we left, and you
will see if it’s worth while to build big ships.”
He came to luncheon next day with his estimate and Fourgues shut up.
Villiers gave me permission to make a copy to send you. He brought all
the figures up to date with the latest information received in America
and you simply can’t get away from it--it’s statistics. Here is the
schedule. I shall copy it for you just as he put it down: