OUR LITERARY CORNER.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15775, 16 December 1916, Page 7

OUR LITERARY CORNER.

DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND. • " CARRYING ON." (BY RUDYARD KIPLIIsGj (Copyright, 1916, by Rudyard Kipling, in U.S.A.) (Rights secured by "The Press. IV. "What mystery is there like the mystery of the other man's job—or what world so cut off as that which he enters ivben he goes to it? Tho eminent surgeon is altogether such a one as ourselves, even till his hand falls on the knob of the theatre door. After that, in the silencc, among the ether fumes, no man exccpt his acolytes, and they won't tell, has over seen his face. So with tho unconsidered curate. Yet, before the war, he had more experience of the business and detail of deattf than any of the people who contemned him. His face also, as he stands his bedsido watches—that countenance with which lie shall justify, himself to his Maker—none have ever looked upon. Even the ditcher is a priest of mysteries at the high moment when he lays out in his mind his levels and the fall of water that he alone can draw off clearly. But catch any of these men five minutes after they have left their altars, and you will find the door s are idiut.

Chancc sent mc almost immediately alter the Jutland fight a lieu tenant of one of the destroyers engaged. Among other matters, I asked him if there was any particular noise. "Well, I haven 7 ! been in the trenches, of oourse/*' he replied, "but I don't think there could have been much more noise than there was." This bears out a report of a destroyer' who could not be certain whether an enemy battleship had blown up or not, saving that in that particular corner it would have been impossible to identify anything less than the, explosion of a whole magazine. "It wasn't exactly noise," he reflected. "Xoiso is what you tako in from outside. This was inside you. It seemed to lift you right out of everything." "And how did the light affect one?" I asked 4 trying to work out a theory that noise and light produced beyond known endurance form an unknown anaesthetic and stimulant, comparable to, but infinitely more potent than the soothing effect of the smoke-pall of ancient battles. "Tho lights wero rather curious," was the answer. "I don't know that one noticed searchlights, particularly, unless they meant business.; but when a lot of big gtms loosed off together, tho whole sea was lit up, and you could see our destroyers running about like cockroaches on a tin soup plate."

"Then is black tho best colour for our destroyers? Some commanders seem to think we ought to use grey." "Blessed if .1 know ," said young Dante. "Everything shows black in that light. Then it all goes out again with a bang. Trying for tho eyes if you aro spbttiug." "And how did tho dogs take it?" I pursued. There arc several destroyers moro or less owned by pet dogs, who start life as the chance-found property of a . stoker, and end in supreme command of tho bridgp. "Most of 'cm didn't like it a bit. They went below time, and wanted to be loved. . They knew it wasn't ordinary practice." "What did Arabella do?" I had heard a good doal of Arabella. "Oh, Arabella's quite different. Her job has always been to look after her master's pyjamas—folded up at tho head of the bunk, you know. She found out pretty &oon the bridge was no place for a lady, so sho hopped downstairs and g°t in. _ You know how she makes thrco little jumps to it —first on/ to the chair, then on the flap-table, -and then up on the pillow. When tho .show was over there she was as usual." "Was she glad to see her master?" "Ka-athcr. Arabella was tho bold, ( lay lady-dog then I" Now Arabella is ißetween nino and clqrf'en and a half. Inches Ion";. "Docs tho Hun run to 'pets at all?" "I shouldn't say so. •He's an unsympathetic felon —the Hun. 'But he might cherish a dachshund or bo. Wo - never picked up any ships' pets off him, and I'm 6ure wo should .If there had been."

C That I believed .as implicitly as tho italo of a destroyer attack some months ;hgo, tho objcct of* which was to flush Zeppelins. It succeeded, tor .tno flotilla was attacked by several. Right in tho middle of tho flurry a destroyer Asked permission to stop and lower linghv to pick up ehip s dog, which iad fallen overboard. Permission was •iranted, and tho dog.'was duly rescued. ■ Lord kuows what tho Hun made of it," said my informant. "Ho was rumbling round, dropping bombs, and the dinghy was digging out for all she was worth, and the Dog-Fiend was swimming for Dunkirk. It muptnavc looked rather mad from above. But they saved tho Dog-Fiend, and ' then everybody . 6woro he was a German spy in disguise."

"JUST A FIGHT." N ."And —about thia Jutland fight?" I- hinted - not for tho first time. "Oh, that was just a fight. There was xnoro of it than any other fight, I suppose, but I expect all modern naval actions must bo pretty much . the same." '•But what does ono do—how does ono foci?" I insisted, though I knew it was hopeless. "One does one's job. Things are happening all the time. A man may be right under your noso one minute—serving a gun or something, and the next minuto ho isn't there." "And one notices that at the time?" "Yes. But there's no timo to keep on noticing it. You've got to carry on somehow or other, or your show stops. I tell you what one does notice, though. If one goes below for anything, or has to pass through a flat somewhere, and one 6ces the old wardroom clock ticking or a photograph pinned up, or anything of that sort, one notices that. Oh, yes, and there was another thing— the way a ship seemed to _blow- up if you were far off her. You'd see a jlaro ;then a blaze, and then the smoke -miles high lifting qnito slowly, fhen you'd get the row and the jar of It—just like bumping over submarines. Then, a long while after, p'raps you run through a regular rain of bits of burnt paper coming down on the decks — like showerg of volcanic ash, you know." The door of the operatingroom .seemed just about to open, but it shut again. "And. the Hun gunnery?" "That was various. Sometimes they began quite well, and went V> pieces after they'd heen strafed a Stile; but sometimes they kicked up

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER. NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

again. There was one Hun-boat that got no end of a hammering, and 11> seemed to do her gunnery good. She improved tremendously till we sank her. 1 expect we'd knocked out some scientific Hun in the controls, and he'd been succeeded by a man who knew how."' It used to bo "Fritz" last year when they spoke of the enemy. Now it is Hun, or, as I have, heard, "Yahun," being a superlative of Yahoo. In the Napoleonic wars wc called the Frenchmen too many names for any one of them to endure; but this \s the ago of standardisation. ,; And what about our Lower Deck?" I continued. "Thej*? Oh. they carried on as usual. It takes a lot to impress the Lower Deck when they're busy." And he mentioned several little things that confirmed this. They had a great deal to do, and they did it serenely because they had been trained to carry on on under all conditions without panicking. What they did in the way of running repairs was even more wonderful, if that be possible, than their normal routine. Tho Lower Deck nowadays is full of strange fish with unlooked for accomplishments, as in the recorded case of two simple seamen of a destroyer who, when need was sorest, came to the front as trained experts in first-aid.

"And now—what about tho actual Hun losses at Juxland?" I ventured. "You've seen the list, haven't you?" "Yes, but it occurred to me —that they might have been a shade under-esti-mated, and I thought perhaps " A perfectly plain, asbestos fire-curtain descended in front of tho already locked door. It was none of his business to dispute th_c drive. If there were any discrepancies between estimate and. results, one might be sure that .the enom.v knew about them, which was the chief thing that matters. It was, said he. Joss that the light was so bad at the hoar of the last round-up when our main fleet had come down from the noith and shovelled tbo Hun round on his tracks. Per contr&, had it been any other .kind of weather tho odds were the Hun would not have ventured so far. As it was, the Hun's fleet had come out and gone back again, none the. better for air and exercise. "We must be thankful for what we had managed to, pick up. But, talking of picking up, there "was an instance of almost unparalleled Joss which had stuck in his memory. A soldier-man, related to one of the officers in ono of our ships that) was put down, had got five days' leave from tho trenches, which he spent with his relative aboard, and thus dropped in for the whole performance. He had been employed in helping to spot, and had lived up a mast till the ship sank, when he stepped off into the water and swam about till he w&g fished out and put ashore. By that time, the tale goes, his engine-room-dried khaki had shrunk halfway up his legs and arms, in which costume he reported himself at the War Office and pleaded for ono iittlo day's extension of leave to make himself decent. "Not a bit of !t," said the War Office. "If you chose to spend your'leave playing with sailormen and getting wet all over, that's your concern. You will return to duty by to-night's boat." (fhis may be a libel on the W. 0., but it sounds very like them.) "And he had to," said tho boy: "but T expect he spent the next week at Headquarters telling generals all about the fight."

READY AGAIN. "And, of course, the Admiralty gave ycu all lets of leave?" "Us? Yes, heaps. We had nothing to do except clean down and oil up and be ready to go to sea again in a few hours.'' That little fact was brought out at the end of almost every destroyer's report. "Having returned to base at such and such a time. I took in oil, otc., said reporvca ready for j>ea at — o'clock." When you think of the amount of work a ship needs even after pcacc manoeuvres, you can realiso what has to be done on tho heels of an action. And, there is nothing liko housework for the troubled soul of a woman, &o a general clean-up is good for sailors. I had this from a petty officer who had also passed through deep waters. "If you've seen your best friend go from alongside you, ana your own officer, and your own boat's crew with- him, and things of that kind, a man's best comfort is small variegated jobs which ho is damned for continuous.'' Presently mv friend of tho destroyer went back to "his stark, desolate life, where feelings do not count, and the fact of his being cold, wet, sea-sick, sleepleiss, or dog-tired h&d no bearing whatever on his business, which was to turn out at any hour in any weather, and do or endure decently, according to ritual, what that hour and that weather demanded.' It is hard to retich the kernel of Navy minds. Tho unbribable seas and mechanisms they work on and through have given them the simplicity of elements and machines. The habit of dealing -with swift accident ; a life of closest and strictest association with their own caste as-well-as contact with all kinds of men all earth over, have added an immense cunning to those qualities: and that they arc from early youth cut out of all feelings that may come between them and their ends makes them more incomprehensible thian Jesuits, even to their own people. What, tlien, must they be to the enemy? Here is a service, which prowls forth, and achieves, at the lowest, something of a victory. Bow far-reaching a one only the war's end will .reveal. It returns in gloomy silence, broken by the occasional hoot of the long-shore loafer, after issuing a bulletin, which, though it may enlighten the professional mind, does not exMlaraio the Meantime, .the enemy triumphs,-wirelessly, far and wide. A few rigid and perfunctory seeming contradictions aro put forward against his resounding claims ; a naval expert or two' is heard talking "off"; the rest is silence. Anon, the enemy, after a . prodigious amount of explanation, which not even the neutrals seem to take any interest in, revises his claims, and. very modestly, enlarges his losses. Still no sign. After weeks there appears a document giving our version of the affair, which is as colourless, detached, and scrupulously impartial as the findings of a prizecourt. It opines that the list of enemy losses which it submits "give tho minimum in regard to numbers, though it is possibly not entirely accurate in regard to the particular class of vessels, especially those that were sunk during the night attacks." Here the matter rests and remains—just like our blockade. There, is an insolence about it all that makes one'gasp.

CATCHING "THE DANCE." Yet that insolence springs naturally and unconsciously as an oath out of tho same spirit that caused the destroyer to pick up the dog. The reports themselves, and tenfold more the stories not in the reports, are charged with it. but no woras by any outsider can reproduce just that .professional tone and touch. A man writing home after tie fight points out that the great consolation for not having cleaned up the enemy altogether was that "anyhow those East Coast devils" —a fellowsquadron, if you please, which up till Jutland, had had most of the fighting— "were not there. They missed that show. We were as cock-a-hoop as a girl who had been to a dance that her sister has missed." This was one of the figures in that dance:--"A little British destroyer, her midships rent by a great shell meant for a battle-cruiser, exuding steam from every pore, able - to so

ahead but not to steer, unable to get out of anybody's way, likely to be rammed by any one of a dozen ships, her siren whimpering, 'Let me through. Make way!' her crew fallen in aft dressed in lifebelts ready for her final plunge, and cheering wildly as it might have been an enthusiastic crowd when the King passes." Let us close on that note. >\ e have been compassed about so long and so blindingly by wonders and miracjes; so overwhelmed by revelations of the spirit of men in the basest and most high, that we have neither time to keep tally of these furious days, nor mind to discern upon which hour of them the world's fate turned. Not in the thick of tlie 2?^' Not in tho press of the odd*, Do "the heroes come totbeir li€j£ht Or we know the demi-gods. That stands over till peace. We can only perceive Men returned from the eeafi. Very grateful for leave They grant us sudden days. Snatched from their business of war. We are too close to appraise "What manner of men they are. And •whether their names go down. "With age-kept victories, Or whether they battle and dn>wn Ccreckoned is hid from our eyes They are too near to be gria.l. But our children shall understand When and how our fate * Y?ns changed, and by whoe© hand Our children shall measure their worth.. We are content to be blind, For its know that we walk on a new-born earth. Wit!) the eivionra of mankind.