the weight of my bag, asked if I were going to stay a week. Secretly I
hoped so, but merely laughed lightly. At the "Reina" I was received
cheerily by the commodore and his wife, and their two nieces R---- and
M----. They are both ripping girls of entirely different types. R---- is
what we would call in England a typical American girl--original, bright,
happy-go-lucky, a delightful companion; while M---- represents an
international type of young womanhood; sympathetic, the sort of girl
that makes a priceless friend, as the newsboy says: "One wat knows all
abawt yer and yet likes yer."
The next day after lunch, dear old Eddy came on board full of enthusiasm
and witty remarks, that would come out, in spite of his efforts to keep
them back, or to reserve them for more fitting occasions. I was very
glad to see him. His father, a naval officer of rank, had lived at
Annapolis during his son's boyhood. Here Edward established a reputation
for being the "baddest" boy in America. He was brimming over with
mischief and was the terror of the young midshipmen who had attained
sufficient seniority to be allowed to walk out with young persons.
He is still full of mischief and loves to tease people, but the person
being "ragged" always enjoys the process. I met him first at a large
steel plant. For two years he had worked very hard, practically as a
laborer, refusing to go about with the young people of the town.
Finally, however, he got promotion and found himself in the sales
department. He now burst upon our local society and no party was
complete without him. He is very much a man's man. He says more witty,
droll things in one week than most people say in five years.
As soon as war broke out he joined the Navy as a "gob," in other words
an ordinary seaman. However, he got a commission, and was soon sent to
Annapolis for a short course of intensive training.
We all chatted for a time and then walked round the city of Annapolis.
Annapolis is very like Cambridge, apparently quite as old fashioned, and
has numbers of nice old red brick houses rather like Queen Anne houses
in England. It seemed sound asleep.
We sought a movie show, and went in to see some star alleged to be good
looking, playing in a piece called "The Snake's Tooth." There were no
serpents, and the star seemed to me to be a little fat and bourgeois
looking, but she wore some stunning frocks for her more agonizing
scenes. There was a handsome looking fellow moving about the screen very
well dressed. I tried to sleep, but couldn't because the chair was not
meant for sleeping in.
After the show we went to a party given by one Peter, which was a great
success. We were the first to arrive, but soon numbers of other people
came in. I enjoyed this party very much and fell in love with both my
host and hostess. Mademoiselle, Peter's sister and our hostess, told me
that she loved my countrymen; and I told her that it would be impossible
for all my countrymen not to love her, which remark seemed to please
her. They've got a ripping little house all filled with old china,
prints, and daintily wrought silver. We were a very cheery party. All
the men were in uniform and everybody knew everybody else and I was
quite sorry when we had to return to the "Reina Mercedes" for dinner.
However, after dinner we went to the local inn and danced, but
unfortunately, I wounded a lady's frock with my spurs so we sought the
grill room, an underground place suggesting the vault of a royal prince
in a fashionable mausoleum.
The next day we all set off in launches to visit some friends who have a
charming country house on the Severn. There were about twenty of us and
we decided to form a club called the Reina Club. There are no rules or
regulations to our club but as we form a mutual admiration society it is
impossible to remain a member unless you like or are liked by the other
members. We made the Commodore president and his wife vice-president.
We had a wonderful day which consisted of golf, swimming, boating,
dancing, and all sorts of other amusing things. Our host and hostess had
engaged the services of a darky band which seemed to follow us about
everywhere even while we were all swimming. I have never tried to swim
to music before.
The Severn is a beautiful wide river. I have heard people in Australia
boasting about Sydney Harbour; I have heard New Zealanders singing the
praises of the Waitemata; I have heard Tasmanians observing that there
is no place in the world like the Derwent River; but I have never yet
heard an American say a great deal about the Severn River. And yet I
cannot imagine anything more lovely than this wide stream which winds
its stately way through the low lying hills of Maryland.
The few houses that appear amidst the foliage help to add beauty to the
whole effect, and when the stream reaches the grounds of the academy,
with first the hospital buildings, then the pretty wee cemetery, and
finally the main group of buildings, the effect is just wonderful. You
should be there on a summer's afternoon when the river is literally
covered with the sailing craft in which the midshipmen practice
seamanship. Some of them man long-boats and dash past with long sweeps
crashing into the blue water, keeping perfect time. They all wear little
round caps edged with white, a superior edition of the head-gear worn by
the ordinary seaman.
Sometimes larger craft will pass, manned by gentlemen wearing the
ordinary naval officer's caps but dressed in khaki shirts and breeches.
They are naval reserve officers and are out with the fell purpose of
laying mines of a harmless nature, and when they pass M----, R----, and
I give up enticing the wily crab to fix itself to the piece of mutton we
have dangling at the end of a string, and have a good look to see if we
can recognize any of our club members. Sometimes we see J----, sometimes
we catch a glimpse of B----; often J---- is at the helm, so we all wave,
but they are much too serious about their work to notice us, so we
return to the job of catching crabs for to-morrow's dinner. This crab
catching is rather fun, but R---- is very bad at it for as soon as a
crab has been tempted to fix its great big claws to the bait, she gets
very excited and the crab gets suspicious and lets go.
One day Eddy and I called on the superintendent and had tea, and I am
perfectly certain that we stayed too long, but we hated leaving,
because our hostess and host were so amusing, and in any case, it was
their fault. There were several midshipmen present; third year men, I
believe. That academy training would make a man out of any "rabbit."
At the end of the week, all my friends of the naval reserve graduated,
and we all went to see the ceremony. The superintendent made a short
speech, every sentence of which was of value--short, brisk, bright,
inspiring. The Secretary of the Navy then addressed the men and
presented them with their diplomas. We all cheered as our friends went
up and returned with their certificates. K---- got a particularly
enthusiastic reception. He is a youth of great size, a mighty man before
the Lord, a fine type of American manhood. He now commands a submarine
destroyer and my great hope is that the Boche sea soldiers won't get
him.
After the ceremony we all parted feeling a little miserable in spite of
the fact that we were all going to meet in New York, a few days later,
at a party given by a very charming American lady who had invited us to
be her guests in New York.
The New York party was a great success. I occupied an apartment at the
hotel which the Duke of Plaza Tora would have been proud to live in. We
went to theatres together and also visited the Midnight Frolic.
The very name "Midnight Frolic" suggests sin and wickedness, but the
show is not at all wicked, really. If you want to be particularly
devilish, the thing to do is to engage a table right underneath a glass
gallery where a few chorus ladies walk around. This struck me as being a
little curious, because it could either be impossibly revolting or
merely futile. It must obviously be the latter, but I dare say certain
men feel themselves to be "reg'lar fellers" as they look at these ladies
from an impossible angle. I wonder why they have it, but I suppose the
people running the show realize that it takes lots of people to make up
this funny world, and that quite a large portion of humanity, while
hating to be really nasty, likes at times to appear fearfully wicked to
others. I guess that they are merely "showing off" like the people at
the Sunday school exercises in Tom Sawyer. This world would be a very
puritanical place if folk showed themselves to be as good as they really
are.
The next night we went to a musical comedy which had some bright spots
marred a little by the leading actor who possessed the supreme courage
to imitate a rather more clever person than himself--Billy Sunday. Of
course, if Billy Sunday is a knave then the actor chap is doing the
right thing to expose him, but quite numbers of people have been made a
little better by the Reverend William and the evidence seems to show
that he is sincere and just as capable of making men better as of being
able to play a jolly good game of base ball. "_Voila!_"
A few days after this I visited two members of the Reina Club who are
married to each other and who live on Long Island with a tiny wee baby.
I loved the baby especially. She had a bad cold and her wee nose was all
red at the corners and her tiny eyes were watering, but that did not
prevent her from being a profound optimist. She looked at me doubtfully
for a moment while she wondered if I would respond to the great big
smile she threatened to give me. I got the smile all right.
And now I am back in Bethlehem, but my mind refuses to think about guns
and gun carriages, but rather persists in soaring sometimes down to
Annapolis, sometimes down to Norfolk, often across the ocean to the
Irish channel, at all of which places I have warm friends amongst the
sailors of Uncle Sam.
XIII
GUNS AND CARRIAGES
BETHLEHEM, U. S. A., October 30, 1917.
I want to tell you about an interesting race of people called
"inspectors." If you are merely a footslogger, and know nothing about
guns and carriages, I had better give you a slight idea of the things
that happen to a simple gun and carriage before it reaches the
comparative rest of the battlefield.
Now the word "inspector" at once suggests someone who inspects. I've had
to inspect my men in order to prepare myself and them for the visitation
of the major, who in turn awaits the colonel. But the inspection of a
gun is a very different matter. As a mere person who is responsible for
the firing of the thing, and also the unwilling target of the people who
desire to destroy the gun and its servants, I was always wont to call
the whole thing, including the wheels and all the mechanism, a "gun."
But this showed remarkable inaccuracy. The gun is just the tubes of
steel, with the top or outside one termed the jacket, that form what a
layman would call the barrel, and a properly trained recruit "the
piece." All the rest is the carriage. If you are dealing with inspectors
be very careful about this. They are generally awfully good at
mathematics, and can dictate letters by the yard without winking. They
can work out fearful things called curves. I believe this has something
to do with strain, and suggests to my unmathematical mind the dreadful
thing I had to draw in order to get through my "little go."
Now the manufacturer of a gun and carriage doesn't just make the thing,
and then after a few trial shots hand it over to the inspector saying:
"Here's your gun. Now go and shoot the Germans, I don't think it will
burst during the first preliminary bombardment and kill a few men." No
sir! The inspector is responsible to his government, that every inch of
that gun and carriage is according to specification. I should think that
on an average each complete gun and carriage requires at least five
pounds of correspondence, three lesser arguments, four greater
arguments, two heated discussions and one decent fight. I have been
present at a fight or two and have come to the wholesome conclusion that
both sides were right--so what can you do?
Now inspectors can be easily divided into two classes--the thorough
mechanic who knows more than the manufacturer about the production of
the piece he is inspecting, and the other. The first chap only requires
to use the five pounds of paper, and seldom or never has the arguments,
unless he lacks a sense of humour. I know an inspector of whom a shop
foreman boasted: "That ther koirnel could condemn every bit of woirk in
the shop without making a single enemy." Now in these times of stress
the fellow above described is a rare blessing, so the men on the job
have got to do their very best. Still inspectors are strange and
interesting people.
Before I came out here, I toured all the great munition factories in
England. I had a wonderful time, but never met an inspector. Now that I
come to think of it, I do remember having seen sitting at the table at
lunch one day some gunner officers, but I thought that they were
anti-aircraft fellows. They must have been inspectors.
In peace time, I suppose the job is an entirely different proposition.
The firm that manufactures artillery and shells probably gets an order
for half a dozen equipments and I suppose the contract time is liberal.
Then the inspector's job and the manufacturer's is simple. The inspector
must have rigid attention to specifications, and the manufacturer,
possibly, only has his best men doing the work. I should think then that
things would run smoothly.
In these days of stress the contract time is cut down to the shortest
possible, and instead of getting orders by the dozen, a manufacturer
gets them by the hundred, sometimes by the thousand. The result is that
all his men are on the job. Also many other munition firms are doing the
same sort of work and really good workmen become scarce. Then again the
inspection staff is multiplied tremendously, and it naturally takes
years to make a really good inspector. Still the fellows I know do their
very utmost to make things go smoothly. But let me tell you just a
little about things as I see them, and of course I see them through
inexperienced eyes.
A manufacturer decides to make a gun and some money, thereby proving
himself to be an optimist. Of course, he may succeed in making the gun.
Poor fellow! He ought to be allowed to make the inspector, too. But he
cannot, and so commences a strife in comparison to which the great war
is a mild performance.
An inspector is ordered to inspect the production of guns at a given
munition plant. He arrives, and meets the officials of the company, and
the first hour is spent in social amenities. But the inspector is not
deceived. He knows that all manufacturers are nice villains, so he must
be on his guard. If, however, he is a villain himself, and I deny, of
course, the existence of villainous inspectors, the matter should be
easy and simple; the whole process is delightful and the manufacturer
will make much money and his optimism will be justified. If the
manufacturer is an honest gentleman and, strangely enough, all the
manufacturers I have met are honest gentlemen, a villainous inspector
will have a hectic time. Some honest manufacturers are comparatively
intelligent, and of course the villainous inspector, if he existed,
would soon leave a rope behind him upon which he could be safely hanged.
Upon an occasion like this if it should happen, I, as a Briton, would
sing "God Save Our Gracious King," and an American would doubtlessly
sing "The Star Spangled Banner," if he could only remember the words and
had a voice of sufficient mobility. However, the whole position is
difficult. There are boundless opportunities for an inspector to develop
"frightfulness."
But let us trace the history of a simple gun and carriage. Its
opportunities for frightfulness and a frightful mess end only when it
reaches the firing line. It has really reached paradise or Nirvana when
it is issued to the battery.
The manufacturer gives orders to the steel mill to make certain steel
ingots. The inspectorial eye watches the billets. They must be of
sufficient length so that the frothy part of the ingot at the top will
not form a vital part of the forging. Generally speaking, the
intelligence of the steel man prevents this from happening so that the
inspector merely gives this a little attention.
The steel is then forged into what eventually will be tubes, breech
rings, and jackets. You see a gun is generally made in at least two
parts unless it is a very small one. They are shrunk together. The
inspector ignores these forgings until they have been "heat-treated."
It is sufficient to say that the forgings are placed in the hands of the
gentleman in charge of the treatment department. After treatment, a
portion of the steel is cut off. This portion enters the laboratory and
here it is placed in a machine which pulls it apart. The machine
displays a sort of tug of war and the inspectors watch. The steel has
got to stand a certain strain. At a certain strain it should stretch;
this is called the elastic limit. At a greater strain it should break,
this is called the ultimate limit. If the steel fails to pass, the
gentleman in charge of the treatment department has failed us all, and a
feeling of exhaustion creeps over the man in charge of production, for
he knows that he must worry the life out of the fellow until he gets it
through again. In these times of stress when all munition factories in
America are endeavouring to work above their capacity the man in charge
of production has a rotten time of it.
However, the steel sometimes gets through and finally reaches a machine
shop. Generally speaking, the foreign inspector doesn't worry very much
about the actual gun until it has been proof-fired. If the manufacturer
has been clever he will have caused his own inspection staff to watch
closely every inch of the steel as the machine work gradually exposes
the metal. If he is wise he will immediately condemn the whole thing if
it is very bad. If the fault is trifling he will have several arguments
and a heated discussion including an appeal to the production man, who
will sympathize but do very little. Perhaps the inspector will decide to
let the work go on. Inspectors are sometimes bad at deciding. They
ponder and ponder and ponder until the production man decides that they
are fools and the manufacturer's man decides that they are villainous
and officious, and possess any amount of damnable qualities. It is all
very difficult. I seem to be wandering on and on about inspectors, but
it is interesting when you think that in a comparatively simple gun and
carriage there are at least three thousand parts, and every part
contains the possibility of an argument.
Why doesn't this wonderful country give titles to its kings of
manufacture? It would simplify matters considerably. You see Mr. Jones
in the position of an inspector, or even Lieutenant Jones, or possibly
Major Jones of the Terriers regards himself as much superior to any
"damned Yankee," and takes a vastly superior attitude. This can be
displayed in an argument. Now if Mr. Beetles, president of the Jerusalem
Steel Company, could only be Lord Rekamnug or the Duke of Baws, believe
me, our national snobbishness would prevent Mr. Jones in the position of
an inspector, or even Lieutenant Jones, or possibly Major Jones of the
Terriers minus a sense of humour, from taking the futile attitude of
superiority which could only be displayed by the wives and daughters of
the more elegant clergy and smaller country gentlemen in "Blighty."
Of course, as a production man, it is my duty to regard inspectors as
effete. Still I will be a traitor and say that a certain inspector who
was at one time the manager of a large ordnance factory not many miles
from Leamington did a great deal for our country over here during this
time of trouble. I wish I could mention his name, but I fear the censor.
He was the "koirnal who could condemn any amount of work without making
a single enemy." He had personality--that colonel.
An inspector obviously should be a specialist. He must know his job
thoroughly. He must know as much about manufacture and metallurgy as the
average officer in a mounted regiment thinks he knows about horses. As I
said before, the whole matter was perfectly simple in the days of peace.
Now it is different. It is impossible to get sufficient men in these
days for the job, so we have got to take what we can get. The most
dangerous form of inspector is the fellow that knows just a little and
pretends that he knows an awful lot. His very ignorance allied to his
sense of duty will make it impossible for him to decide when a part is
serviceable, although not absolutely up to specifications. This man
causes delays and trouble.
Then there is the chap who knows quite a lot, but alas, possesses no
sense of humour! This type is called an obstructionist. He is very
difficult, well nigh impossible. He has much fighting spirit and
thoroughly enjoys a dispute with the manufacturer. He also enjoys his
autocratic position. Quite often he gives in all right, but he lacks
"sweet reasonableness." The longer one lives, the more one sees the
value of personality in every branch of life.
An essential quality in a good inspector is personality. This never
exists minus a sense of humour. An inspector has to condemn masses of
work--work that has had hours and hours of patient machining and
fitting. If he could only do it nicely! Quite often, he uses a large axe
when a fine surgical instrument would save a lot of trouble. In America
it ought not to be difficult, for in my humble opinion the American
manufacturer is generally "sweetly reasonable." It always seems to me a
good thing if you honestly disapprove of a man or a nation, moreover, in
dealing with that man or nation to hide your thoughts, or forget them,
if possible. Take the "wisest fool" in Christendom's advice to the
Presbyterians at the Hampton Court conference--"Pray, gentlemen,
consider that perhaps you may be wrong."
In every organization there is always a definite procedure which has got
to be adhered to. The big man and the fool will take a short cut
sometimes and they often get away with it. Of course, they do not
always and there is trouble, but the big man takes his punishment. The
mediocre man will always stick to the beaten tracks, with the crowd.
It has always seemed to me that during these distressful times all short
cuts should be taken. The guns have got to get to France and that is all
about it. If they are thoroughly serviceable that is all that matters.
But talking about short cuts and fools, I remember an awful thing that
happened to me once in the early days of the war while we were training
in England. I, as a fellow from the cavalry, was given the charming job
of teaching the N.C.O.'s of two brigades to ride. It had to be done
quickly, of course, so instead of taking the men into the riding school
I used to take them across country. Of course, they fell off by the
dozens. I commanded them to follow me and dashed down narrow tracks in
the forest at a good smart trot. It meant bending down to avoid branches
or getting swept off. All kinds of things used to happen but they learnt
to stick to their horses. Sometimes I had not enough horses, and I am
ashamed to say that some of my fellows pinched all the mounts from
another battery. Quite selfish this, and when the officer commanding the
battery whose horses had been pinched asked where his gees were, he was
told that they had been pinched "by that there lootenant who takes the
sergeants out over the hills to see the German prison camps." Of course,
it is well to say that I was ignorant of the whole proceeding and
although all Battery D's horses had been taken they only numbered about
twelve. Incidentally this officer said nothing to me about it, but he
gave his own men hell for allowing the horses to be taken, showing
himself thereby a clever man. However, I did not mind very much. My
N.C.O.'s had to learn to ride and that was all about it.