THE BRITISH NAVY MAN

Evening Star, Issue 16627, 9 January 1918, Page 2

THE BRITISH NAVY MAN

A FEARFUL AD VENTURE. An American journalist who visited the British Fleet was deeply impressed by the matter-of-fact ways of tho British seaman, and by bis dislike for heroics. To illustrate .bis point lie related his conversation with a gunner who had been sliowmg the visiting journalists the mechanism of his gun, which he had fought through the battle of Jutland. ° " What," asked one of the party, " was the most dangerous moment vou w'ere ever up against?" The gunner* stiffened under the question. But he did not uesitate. Here was'his chance. Here was his chance to promote the purposes of the Government at London m their courteous tolerance of processions of journalists 'through the Fleet. Here was his chance to-do his bit in the publicity line for the prestige of tho Navy and the Empire. Ho did it. He did it m a way that convinced me, just as a thousand other incidents convinced me, that prestige is the last thins? the English care about. Without one moment's hesitation that gunner plunged headlong into the xollowing appalling yam:— "It was. in South America, and we were lying in port, and I wasn't thinkin" of any dangers, of course, and I was cleaning my gun in my turret, and I opened the breech just like this, and, of course, 1 didn t know there was any visitors on board, but there was. because the President of the country was invited to come aboard, and he came and he brought his wife with him, and there s they wero on deck and I suppose she wanted to see what a gun was like, but how coidd I know what she was doing, so I opened the breech just like this, and the oora-m-essed air went through just like this like you hear it now, like a storm, and all at once I heard a screech, an awful screech, like a woman, and then I heard men yelling on the deck and running around and. shouting, and it was a terrible row, and tho chief gunner came running to me. and he said : ' If the wife of a President wants to look down the muzzle ot one of His Majesty's guns, whv'must you go and pick just that minute" to do a lot of messy cleaning, and to go and open the breech,' he said, and so I closed the breech and they've picked that ladv ott thedeck, he said, and they've picked her hair off tho rail, and" they've picked her hat out of the sea, he said, and I'm sorry for yon, he said, and he went away and the captain sent for me, and ho said all vou ve done this morning, he said is to do your best to start a bloody war between tlus here republic and the British Empire, that's all you've dono, be said. You may go." He came to the end of this .perverse and preposterous banality, and lie looked his questioner straight in the eve. and So tihai. sir," he said, "was the'most dangerous moment I ever had myself "