The Victory At Sea Part 4

At the very moment that Admiral Bayly was giving these impressive instructions the submarine campaign had reached its crisis; the fortunes of the Allies had never struck so low a depth as at that time. An incident connected with our arrival, not particularly important in itself, brought home to our men the unsleeping vigilance of the enemy with whom they had to deal.

Perhaps the Germans did not actually have advance information of the arrival of this first detachment of our destroyers; but they certainly did display great skill in divining what was to happen. At least it was a remarkable coincidence that for the first time in many months a submarine laid a mine-field directly off the entrance to Queenstown the day before our ships arrived. Soon afterward a parent ship of the destroyers reached this port and encountered the same welcome; and soon after that a second parent ship found a similar mine-field awaiting her arrival. The news that our destroyers had reached Queenstown actually appeared in the German papers several days before we had released it in the British and American press. Thanks to the vigilance and efficiency of the British mine-sweepers, however, the enemy gained nothing from all these preparations, for the channel was cleared of German mines before our vessels reached port.

The night before the destroyers arrived, while some of the officers of my staff were dining with Admiral Bayly, the windows were shaken by heavy explosions made by the mines which the sweepers were dragging out.

Admiral Bayly jokingly remarked that it was really a pity to interfere with such a warm welcome as had apparently been planned for our crusaders. Even the next night, while the destroyer officers were dining at Admiralty House, several odd mines exploded outside the channel that had been swept the previous day. This again impressed our men with the fact that the game which they had now entered was quite a different affair from their peace-time manoeuvres.

The Germans at that time were jubilant over the progress of their submarine campaign and, indeed, they had good reason to be. The week that our first flotilla reached Irish waters their submarines had destroyed 240,000 tons of Allied shipping; if the sinking should keep up at this rate, it meant losses of 1,000,000 tons a month and an early German victory.

In looking over my letters of that period, I find many references that picture the state of the official mind. All that time I was keeping closely in touch with Amba.s.sador Page, who was energetically seconding all my efforts to bring more American ships across the Atlantic.

"It remains a fact," I wrote our Amba.s.sador, "that at present the enemy is succeeding and that we are failing. Ships are being sunk faster than they can be replaced by the building facilities of the world. This simply means that the enemy is winning the war. There is no mystery about that. The submarines are rapidly cutting the Allies' lines of communication. When they are cut, or sufficiently interfered with, we must accept the enemy's terms."

Six days before our destroyers put in at Queenstown I sent this message to Mr. Page:

Allies do not now command the sea. Transport of troops and supplies strained to the utmost and the maintenance of the armies in the field is threatened.

Such, then, was the situation when our little destroyer flotilla first went to sea to do battle with the submarine.

II

Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, who now became the commander of the American destroyers at Queenstown, so far as their military operations were concerned, had spent fifty years in the British navy, forty years of this time actually at sea. This ripe experience, combined with a great natural genius for salt water, had made him one of the most efficient men in the service. In what I have already said, I may have given a slightly false impression of the man; that he was taciturn, that he was generally regarded as a hard taskmaster, that he never made friends at the first meeting, that he was more interested in results than in persons--all this is true; yet these qualities merely concealed what was, at bottom, a generous, kindly, and even a warm-hearted character.

Admiral Bayly was so retiring and so modest that he seemed almost to have a.s.sumed these exterior traits to disguise his real nature. When our men first met the Admiral they saw a man who would exact their last effort and accept no excuses for failure; when admitted to more intimate a.s.sociation, however, they discovered that this weather-beaten sailor had a great love for flowers, for children, for animals, for pictures, and for books; that he was deeply read in general literature, in history, and in science, and that he had a knowledge of their own country and its inst.i.tutions which many of our own officers did not possess. Americans have great reason to be proud of the achievements of their naval men, and one of the most praiseworthy was the fact that they became such intimate friends of Admiral Bayly. For this man's nature was so sincere that he could never bring himself to indulge in friendships which he deemed unworthy. Early in his a.s.sociation with our men, he told them bluntly that any success he and they might have in getting on together would depend entirely upon the manner in which they performed their work. If they acquitted themselves creditably, well and good; if not, he should not hesitate to find fault with them. It is thus a tribute to our officers that in a very short time they and Admiral Bayly had established relations which were not only friendly but affectionate.

Not long after our destroyers arrived at Queenstown most of the British destroyers left to reinforce the hard-driven flotillas in the Channel and the North Sea, so that the destroyer forces at Queenstown under Admiral Bayly became almost exclusively American, though they worked with many British vessels--sloops, trawlers, sweepers, and mystery ships, in co-operation with British destroyers and other vessels in the north and other parts of Ireland. The Admiral watched over our ships and their men with the jealous eye of a father. He always referred to his command as "my destroyers" and "my Americans," and woe to anyone who attempted to interfere with them or do them the slightest injustice!

Admiral Bayly would fight for them, against the combined forces of the whole British navy, like a tigress for her cubs. He constantly had a weather eye on Plymouth, the main base of the British destroyers, to see that the vessels from that station did their fair share of the work.

Once or twice a dispute arose between an American destroyer commander and a British; in such cases Admiral Bayly vigorously took the part of the American. "You did perfectly right," he would say to our men, and then he would turn all his guns against the interfering Britisher.

Relations between the young Americans and the experienced Admiral became so close that they would sometimes go to him with their personal troubles; he became not only their commander, but their confidant and adviser.

There was something in these bright young chaps from overseas, indeed, so different from anything which he had ever met before, that greatly appealed to this seasoned Englishman. One thing that he particularly enjoyed was their sense of humour. The Admiral himself had a keen wit and a love of stories; and he also had the advantage, which was not particularly common in England, of understanding American slang and American anecdotes. There are certain stories which apparently only an upbringing on American soil qualifies one to appreciate; yet Admiral Bayly always instantly got the point. He even took a certain pride in his ability to comprehend the American joke. One of the regular features of life at Queenstown was a group of retired British officers--fine, white-haired old gentlemen who could take no active part in the war but who used to find much consolation in coming around to smoke their pipes and to talk things over at Admiralty House. Admiral Bayly invariably found delight in encouraging our officers to entertain these rare old souls with American stories; their utter bewilderment furnished him endless entertainment. The climax of his pleasure came when, after such an experience, the old men would get the Admiral in a corner, and whisper to him: "What in the world do they mean?"

The Admiral was wonderfully quick at repartee, as our men found when they began "joshing" him on British peculiarities, for as naval attache he had travelled extensively in the United States, had observed most of our national eccentricities, and thus was able promptly "to come back."

In such contests our men did not invariably come off with all the laurels. Yet, despite these modern tendencies, Admiral Bayly was a conservative of the conservatives, having that ingrained British respect for old things simply because they were old. An ancient British custom requires that at church on Sundays the leading dignitary in each community shall mount the reading desk and read the lessons of the day; Admiral Bayly would perform this office with a simplicity and a reverence which indicated the genuinely religious nature of the man. And in smaller details he was likewise the ancient, tradition-loving Briton.

He would never think of writing a letter to an equal or superior officer except in longhand; to use a typewriter for such a purpose would have been profanation in his eyes. I once criticized a certain Admiral for consuming an hour or so in laboriously penning a letter which could have been dictated to a stenographer in a few minutes.

"How do you ever expect to win the war if you use up time this way?" I asked.

"I'd rather lose the war," the Admiral replied, but with a twinkle in his eye, "than use a typewriter to my chiefs!"

Our officers liked to chaff the Admiral quietly on this conservatism. He frequently had a number of them to breakfast, and upon one such occasion the question was asked as to why the Admiral ate an orange after breakfast, instead of before, as is the custom in America.

"I can tell you why," said Commander Zogbaum.

"Well, why is it?" asked the Admiral.

"Because that's what William the Conqueror used to do."

"I can think of no better reason than that for doing it," the Admiral promptly answered. But this remark tickled him immensely, and became a byword with him. Ever afterward, whenever he proposed to do something which the Americans regarded as too conservative, he would say:

"You know that this is what William the Conqueror used to do!"

Yet in one respect the Admiral was all American; he was a hard worker even to the point of hustle. He insisted on the strictest attention to the task in hand from his subordinates, but at least he never spared himself. After he had arrived at Queenstown, two years before our destroyers put in, he proceeded to reorganize Admiralty House on the most business-like basis. The first thing he pounced upon was the billiard-room in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He decided that it would make an excellent plotting-room, and that the billiard-tables could be transformed into admirable drawing-boards for his staff; he immediately called the superintendent and told him to make the necessary transformations.

"All right," said the superintendent. "We'll start work on them to-morrow morning."

"No, you won't," Admiral Bayly replied. "We propose to be established in this room using these tables to-morrow morning. They must be all ready for use by eight o'clock."

And he was as good as his word; the workmen spent the whole night making the changes. At the expense of considerable personal comfort he also caused one half of the parlour of Admiralty House to be part.i.tioned off as an office and the wall thus formed covered with war maps.

These incidents are significant, not only of Admiral Bayly's methods, but of his ideals. In his view, if a billiard room could be made to serve a war purpose, it had no proper place in an Admiralty house which was the headquarters for fighting German submarines. The chief duty of all men at that crisis was work, and their one responsibility was the defeat of the Hun. Admiralty House was always open to our officers; they spent many a delightful evening there around the Admiral's fire; they were constantly entertained at lunch and at dinner, and they were expected to drop in for tea whenever they were in port. But social festivities in the conventional sense were barred. No ladies, except the Admiral's relatives, ever visited the place. Some of the furnishings were rather badly worn, but the Admiral would make no requisitions for new rugs or chairs; every penny in the British exchequer, he insisted, should be used to carry on the war. He was scornfully critical of any naval officers who made a lavish display of silver on their tables; money should be spent for depth charges, torpedoes, and twelve-inch sh.e.l.ls, not for ostentation. He was scrupulousness itself in observing all official regulations in the matter of food and other essentials.

For still another reason the Admiral made an ideal commander of American naval forces. He was a strict teetotaller. His abstention was not a war measure; he had always had a strong aversion to alcohol in any form and had never drank a c.o.c.ktail or a brandy and soda in his life. Dinners at Admiralty House, therefore, were absolutely "dry," and in perfect keeping with American naval regulations.

Though Admiral Bayly was not athletic--his outdoor games being limited to tip-and-run cricket in the Admiralty grounds, which he played with a round bat and a tennis ball--he was a man of wiry physique and a tireless walker. Indeed the most active young men in our navy had great difficulty in keeping pace with him. One of his favourite diversions on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon was to take a group on a long tramp in the beautiful country surrounding Queenstown; by the time the party reached home, the Admiral, though sixty years old, was usually the freshest of the lot. I still vividly remember a long walk which I took with him in a pelting rain; I recall how keenly he enjoyed it and how young and nimble he seemed to be when we reached home, drenched to the skin. A steep hill led from the sh.o.r.e up to Admiralty House; Sir Lewis used to say that this was a valuable military a.s.set--it did not matter how angry a man might be with him when he started for headquarters, by the time he arrived, this wearisome climb always had the effect of quieting his antagonism. The Admiral was fond of walking up this hill with our young officers; he himself usually reached the top as fresh as a daisy, while his juniors were frequently puffing for breath.

He enjoyed testing out our men in other ways; nothing delighted him more than giving them hard jobs to do--especially when they accomplished the tasks successfully. One day he ordered one of our officers, Lieutenant-Commander Roger Williams, captain of the _Duncan_, a recent arrival at Queenstown, to cross the Irish Sea and bring back a ship. The joke lay in the fact that this man's destroyer had just come in with her steering gear completely out of commission--a circ.u.mstance which Admiral Bayly well understood. Many officers would have promptly asked to be excused on this ground, but not this determined American. He knew that the Admiral was trying to "put something over on him," and he rose to the occasion. The fact that Queenstown Harbour is long and narrow, not wide enough for a destroyer to turn around in, made Commander Williams's problem still more difficult, but by cleverly using his engines, he succeeded in backing out--the distance required was five miles; he took another mile and a half to turn his ship and then he went across the sea and brought back his convoy--all without any steering gear. This officer never once mentioned to the Admiral the difficulties under which he had worked, but his achievement completely won Sir Lewis's heart, and from that time this young man became one of his particular favourites.

Indeed, it was the constant demonstration of this kind of fundamental character in our naval men which made the Admiral admire them so.

On occasions Admiral Bayly would go to sea himself--something quite unprecedented and possibly even reprehensible, for it was about the same thing as a commanding general going into the front-line trenches. But the Admiral believed that doing this now and then helped to inspire his men; and, besides that, he enjoyed it--he was not made for a land sailor. He had as flagship a cruiser of about 5,000 tons; he had a way of jumping on board without the slightest ceremony and taking a cruise up the west coast of Ireland. On occasion the Admiral would personally lead an expedition which was going to the relief of a torpedoed vessel, looking for survivors adrift in small boats. One day Admiral Bayly, Captain Pringle of the U.S.S. _Melville_, Captain Campbell, the Englishman whose exploits with mystery ships had given him worldwide fame, and myself went out on the _Active_ to watch certain experiments with depth charges. It was a highly imprudent thing to do, because a vessel of such draft was an excellent target for torpedoes, but that only added to the zest of the occasion from Admiral Bayly's point of view.

"What a bag this would be for the Hun!" he chuckled. "The American Commander-in-Chief, the British Admiral commanding in Irish waters, a British and an American captain!"

In our mind's eye we could see our picture in the Berlin papers--four distinguished prisoners standing in a row.

A single fact shows with what consideration Admiral Bayly treated his subordinates. The usual naval regulation demands that an officer, coming in from a trip, shall immediately seek out his commander and make a verbal report. Frequently the men came in late in the evening, extremely fatigued; to make the visit then was a hardship and might deprive them of much-needed sleep. Admiral Bayly therefore had a fixed rule that such visits should be made at ten o'clock of the morning following the day of arrival. On such occasions he would often be found seated somewhat grimly behind his desk wholly absorbed in the work in hand. If he were writing or reading his mail he would keep steadily at it, never glancing up until he had finished. He would listen to the report stoically, possibly say a word of praise, and then turn again to the business in hand. Occasionally he would notice that his abruptness had perhaps pained the young American; then he would break into an apologetic smile, and ask him to come up to dinner that evening, and even--this was the greatest honour of all--to spend the night at Admiralty House.

These dinners were great occasions for our men, particularly as they were presided over by Miss Voysey, the Admiral's niece. Miss Voysey, the little spaniel, Patrick, and the Admiral const.i.tuted the "family," and the three were entirely devoted to one another. Pat in particular was an indispensable part of this menage; I have never seen any object quite so crestfallen and woe-begone as this little dog when either Miss Voysey or the Admiral spent a day or two away from the house. Miss Voysey was a young woman of great personal charm and cultivation; probably she was the influence that most contributed to the happiness and comfort of our officers at Queenstown. From the day of their arrival she entered into the closest comradeship with the Americans. She kept open house for them: she was always on hand to serve tea in the afternoon, and she never overlooked an opportunity to add to their well-being. As a result of her delightful hospitality Admiralty House really became a home for our officers. Miss Voysey had a genuine enthusiasm for America and Americans; possibly the fact that she was herself an Australian made her feel like one of us; at any rate, there were certain qualities in our men that she found extremely congenial, and she herself certainly won all their hearts. Anyone who wishes to start a burst of enthusiasm from our officers who were stationed at Queenstown need only to mention the name of Miss Voysey. The dignity with which she presided over the Admiral's house, and the success with which she looked out for his comfort, also inspired their respect. Miss Voysey was the leader in all the war charities at Queenstown, and she and the Admiral made it their personal duty to look out for the victims of torpedoed ships. At whatever hour these survivors arrived they were sure of the most warm-hearted attentions from headquarters. In a large hall in the Custom House at the landing the Admiral kept a stock of cigarettes and tobacco, and the necessary gear and supplies for making and serving hot coffee at short notice, and nothing ever prevented him and his people from stationing themselves there to greet and serve the survivors as soon as they arrived--often wet and cold, and sometimes wounded. Even though the Admiral might be at dinner he and Miss Voysey would leave their meal half eaten and hurry to the landing to welcome the survivors. The Admiral and his officers always insisted on serving them, and they would even wash the dishes and put them away for the next time. The Admiral, of course, might have ordered others to do this work, but he preferred to give this personal expression of a real seaman's sympathy for other seamen in distress. It is unnecessary to say that any American officers who could get there in time always lent a hand. I am sure that long after most of the minor incidents of this war have faded from my memory, I shall still keep a vivid recollection of this kindly gentleman, Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., C.V.O., Royal Navy, serving coffee to wretched British, American, French, Italian, j.a.panese, or negro sailors, with a cheering word for each, and afterward, with sleeves tucked up, calmly washing dishes in a big pan of hot water.

I have my fears that the Admiral will not be particularly pleased by the fact that I have taken all these pains to introduce him to the American public. Excessive modesty is one of his most conspicuous traits. When American correspondents came to Queenstown, Admiral Bayly would receive them courteously. "You can have all you want about the navy," he would say, "but remember--not a word about Lewis Bayly." He was so reticent that he was averse to having his picture taken; even the moving picture operator detailed to get an historic record of the arrival of our destroyers did not obtain a good view of the Admiral, for whenever Sir Lewis saw him coming he would turn his back to the camera! My excuse for describing this very lovable man, however, is because he became almost an object of veneration to our American officers, and because, since for eighteen months he was the commander of the American forces based on Queenstown, he is an object of legitimate interest to the American people. The fact that the Admiral was generally known to our officers as "Uncle Lewis," and that some of those who grew to know him best even called him that to his face, ill.u.s.trates the delightful relations which were established. Any account of the operations of our navy in the European War would thus be sadly incomplete which ignored the splendid sailor who was largely responsible for their success.

Another officer who contributed greatly to the efficiency of the American forces was Captain E. R. G. R. Evans, R.N., who was detailed by Admiral Jellicoe at my request to act as liaison officer with our destroyers. No more fortunate selection could have been made. Captain Evans had earned fame as second in command of the Scott Antarctic expedition; he had spent much time in the United States and knew our people well; indeed when war broke out he was lecturing in our country on his polar experiences. A few days before our division arrived Captain Evans had distinguished himself in one of the most brilliant naval actions of the war. He was commander of the destroyer-leader _Broke_--a "destroyer-leader" being a destroyer of unusually large size--and in this battle three British vessels of this type had fought six German destroyers. Captain Evans's ship sank one German destroyer and rammed another, pa.s.sing clear over its stern and cutting it nearly in two. The whole of England was ringing with this exploit, and it was a decided tribute to our men that Admiral Jellicoe consented to detail the commander of the _Broke_. He was a man of great intelligence, great energy, and, what was almost equally to the point, he was extremely companionable; whether he was relating his experiences at the South Pole, or telling us of active life on a destroyer, or swapping yarns with our officers, or giving us the value of his practical experiences in the war, Captain Evans was always at home with our men--indeed, he seemed to be almost one of us.

The fact that these American destroyers were placed under the command of a British admiral was somewhat displeasing to certain Americans. I remember that one rather b.u.mptious American correspondent, on a visit to Queenstown, was loud in expressing his disapproval of this state of affairs, and even threatened to "expose" us all in the American press.

The fact that I was specifically commissioned as destroyer commander also confused the situation. Yet the procedure was entirely proper, and, in fact, absolutely necessary. My official t.i.tle was "Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Operating in European Waters"; besides this, I was the representative of our Navy Department at the British Admiralty and American member of the Allied Naval Council. These duties required my presence in London, which became the centre of all our operations. I was commander not only of our destroyers at Queenstown, but of a destroyer force at Brest, another at Gibraltar, of subchaser forces at Corfu and Plymouth, of a mixed force at the Azores, of the American battle squadrons at Scapa Flow and Berehaven, Ireland, certain naval forces at Murmansk and Archangel in north Russia, and of many other contingents.

Clearly it was impossible for me to devote all my time exclusively to any one of these commands; so far as actual operations were concerned it was necessary that particular commanders should control them. All these destroyer squadrons, including that at Queenstown, were under the command of the American Admiral stationed in London; whenever they sailed from Queenstown on specific duty, however, they sailed under orders from Admiral Bayly. Any time, however, I could withdraw these destroyers from Queenstown and send them where the particular necessities required. My position, that is, was precisely the same as that of General Pershing in France. He sent certain American divisions to the British army; as long as they acted with the British they were subject to the orders of Sir Douglas Haig; but General Pershing could withdraw these men at any time for use elsewhere. The actual supreme command of all our forces, army and navy, rested in the hands of Americans; but, for particular operations, they naturally had to take their orders from the particular officer under whom they were stationed.

III

On May 17th a second American destroyer flotilla of six ships arrived at Queenstown. From that date until July 5th a new division put in nearly every week. The six destroyers which escorted our first troopships from America to France were promptly a.s.signed to duty with our forces in Irish waters. Meanwhile other ships were added. On May 22nd the _Melville_, the "Mother Ship" of the destroyers, arrived and became the flagship of all the American vessels which were stationed at Queenstown. This repair and supply ship practically took the place of a dockyard, so far as our destroyer forces were concerned. Queenstown had been almost abandoned as a navy yard many years before the European War and its facilities for the repair of warships were consequently very inadequate. The _Melville_ relieved the British authorities of many responsibilities of this kind. She was able to do three-quarters of all this work, except major repairs and those which required docking. Her resources for repairing destroyers, and for providing for the wants and comforts of our men, aroused much admiration in British naval circles.

The rapidity with which our forces settled down to work, and the seamanly skill which they manifested from the very beginning, likewise made the most favourable impression. By July 5th we had thirty-four destroyers at Queenstown--a force that remained practically at that strength until November. In 1918 much of the work of patrolling the seas and of convoying ships to the west and south of Ireland--the area which, in many ways, was the most important field of submarine warfare--fell upon these American ships. The officers and crews began this work with such zest that by June 1st I was justified in making the following statement to the Navy Department: "It is gratifying to be able to report that the operations of our forces in these waters have proved not only very satisfactory, but also of marked value to the Allies in overcoming the submarine menace. The equipment and construction of our ships have proved adequate and sufficient, and the personnel has shown an unusually high degree of enthusiasm and ability to cope with the situation presented."

It is impossible to exaggerate the enthusiasm which the arrival of these vessels produced upon the British public. America itself experienced something of a thrill when the news was first published that our destroyers had reached European waters, but this was mild compared with the joy which spread all over the British Isles. The feeling of Americans was mainly one of pride; our people had not yet suffered much from the European cataclysm, and despite the fact that we were now active partic.i.p.ants, the war still seemed very far off and unreal. The fact that a German victory would greatly endanger our national freedom had hardly entered our national consciousness; the idea seemed dim, abstract, perhaps even absurd; but in Great Britain, with the guns constantly booming almost within earshot of the people, the horrors of the situation were acutely realized. For this reason those American destroyers at Queenstown immediately became a symbol in the minds of the British people. They represented not only the material a.s.sistance which our limitless resources and our almost inexhaustible supply of men would bring to a cause which was really in desperate straits; but they stood also for a great spiritual fact; for the kinship of the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples, which, although separated politically, had now joined hands to fight for the ideals upon which the civilization of both nations rested. In the preceding two years Great Britain had had her moments of doubt--doubt as to whether the American people had remained true to the principles that formed the basis of their national life; the arrival of these ships immediately dispelled all such misgivings.

Almost instinctively the minds of the British people turned to the day, nearly three hundred years before, when the _Mayflower_ sailed for the wilderness beyond the seas. The moving picture film, which depicted the arrival of our first destroyer division, and which was exhibited all over Great Britain to enthusiastic crowds, cleverly accentuated this idea. This film related how, in 1620, a few Englishmen had landed in North America; how these adventurers had laid the foundations of a new state based on English conceptions of justice and liberty; how they had grown great and prosperous; how the stupidity of certain British statesmen had forced them to declare their independence; how they had fought for this independence with the utmost heroism; how out of these disjointed British colonies they had founded one of the mightiest nations of history; and how now, when the liberties of mankind were endangered, the descendants of the old _Mayflower_ pioneers had in their turn crossed the ocean--this time going eastward--to fight for the traditions of their race. Had Americans been making this film, they would have ill.u.s.trated another famous episode in our history that antedated, by thirteen years, the voyage of the _Mayflower_--that is, the landing of British colonists in Virginia, in 1607; but in the minds of the English people the name _Mayflower_ had become merely a symbol of American progress and all that it represented. This whole story appealed to the British ma.s.ses as one of the great miracles of history--a single, miserable little settlement in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay expanding into a continent overflowing with resources and wealth; a shipload of men, women, and children developing, in less than three centuries, into a nation of more than 100,000,000 people. And the arrival of our destroyers, pictured on the film, informed the British people that all this youth and energy had been thrown upon their side of the battle.

One circ.u.mstance gave a particular appropriateness to the fact that I commanded these forces. In 1910 I had visited England as captain of the battleship _Minnesota_, a unit in a fleet which was then cruising in British and French waters. It was apparent even at that time that preparations were under way for a European war; on every hand there were plenty of evidences that Germany was determined to play her great stroke for the domination of the world. In a report to the Admiral commanding our division I gave it as my opinion that the great European War would begin within four years. In a speech at the Guildhall, where 800 of our sailors were entertained at lunch by the Lord Mayor, Sir Vezey Strong, I used the words which involved me in a good deal of trouble at the time and which have been much quoted since. The statement then made was purely the inspiration of the moment; it came from the heart, not from the head; probably the evidences that Germany was stealthily preparing her great blow had something to do with my outburst. I certainly spoke without any authorization from my Government, and realized at once that I had committed a great indiscretion. "If the time should ever come," I said, "when the British Empire is menaced by a European coalition, Great Britain can rely upon the last ship, the last dollar, the last man, and the last drop of blood of her kindred beyond the sea." It is not surprising that the appearance of American ships, commanded by the American who had spoken these words seven years before, strongly appealed to the British sense of the dramatic. Indeed, it struck the British people as a particularly happy fulfilment of prophecy. These sentences were used as an introduction to the moving picture film showing the arrival of our first destroyer division, and for weeks after reaching England I could hardly pick up a newspaper without these words of my Guildhall speech staring me in the face.

Of course, any American admiral then commanding American naval forces in European waters would have been acclaimed as the living symbol of Anglo-American co-operation; and it was simply as the representative of the American people and the American navy that the British people received me so appreciatively. At first the appearance of our uniforms aroused much curiosity; our tightly fitting blouses were quite different from the British sack coats, and few people in London, in fact, knew who we were. After our photographs had appeared in the press, however, the people always recognized us in the streets. And then something quite unusual happened. That naval and military men should salute my staff and me was to have been expected, but that civilians should show this respect for the American uniform was really unprecedented. Yet we were frequently greeted in this way. It indicated, almost more than anything else, how deeply affected the British people were by America's entrance into the war. All cla.s.ses and all ages showed this same respect and grat.i.tude to our country. Necessarily I had to attend many public dinners and even to make many speeches; the people gathered on such occasions always rose _en ma.s.se_ as a tribute to the uniform which I wore. Sometimes such meetings were composed of boy scouts, of schoolboys or schoolgirls, of munition workers, of journalists, or of statesmen; and all, irrespective of age or social station or occupation, seemed delighted to pay respect to the American navy. There were many evidences of interest in the "American Admiral" that were really affecting. Thus one day a message came from Lady Roberts, widow of the great soldier, Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, saying that she was desirous of meeting the "American Admiral." I was very glad to go out in the country and spend a Sunday afternoon with her. This charming, white-haired old lady was very feeble, and had to spend most of her time in a wheel-chair. But her mind was bright as ever, and she had been following the war with the closest attention. She listened with keen interest as I told her all about the submarines, and she asked innumerable questions concerning them. She was particularly affected when she spoke about the part the United States was playing in the war, and remarked how much our partic.i.p.ation would have delighted the Field-Marshal.