THE CALL OF THE SEA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18711, 17 May 1924, Page 19 (Supplement)

THE CALL OF THE SEA.

ANCIENT AND URGENT. ' BY MATANGA. • The least self-conscious folk in New Zealand during the visit *of the Special Service Squadron have been the officers and men of the visiting ships. "What to their hosts has been an occasion' of preening pride and national introspection, full of talk about - the Dominion's progress and the Empire's fortunes, has been to them : nothing extraordinary. We have bedecked our ports and streets, and taken care to appear personally at our : best. It has cost us money and thought. They, it is true, have dressed ship and

paraded, enjoyed fetes and ; feasting, and been on show. But we, too, have been on show, and very well aware of the fact. They have taken it all as a matter of oourse—very jolly, very interesting, but all in the day's work. "It's a way they httve in the Navy." .

The delicious abandon of their bearing ashore has revealed the naturalness of it all. We have marvelled at the might oi the ships, such triumphs of human skill and enterprise they have spoken with an

aasy. familiarity of what to us is wonder-

ful beyond compare. Perhaps, after allit is the most stirring thought they leave everywhere in their wakeit is they, not we, who are in the real British succession and true to type.

There is salt in every drop of blue British blood. The nearer we have kept in the line of ancient ancestry the more we have felt the tug of the sea. We have, as a nation, a Viking lineage. The Original Englishmen. Anglo-Saxon is a misnomer. When the Roman frontiersmen first saw our sea-far-ing forefathers, as they hove in sight along the garrisoned coasts of Britain in the strange craft that bore them down the North Sea; waterways in quest of further adventure, .they saw in these newcomers a resemblance to the southerly Germanic tribes known to them as Saxons. So Saxons the newcomers were called, by Romans and by earliest Britons; and Saxon they have remained in the mouth of the world until these ;more prying days. But the navigators called themselves,. not Saxons, but Englishmen. They did not come from any ancient Saxony, but from the coaat lands about Denmark. They took the name they used from a little district washed by two waterways of the Baltic on the east of the Danish peninsula, the original "jutland." They called it Angeln, that tiny bit of the Schleswig that Germany not long since snatched arid held until the Great War saw historic justice done, and they themselves were Angeln-inen. Likely enough, some among the adventurous voyagers were Goths, and some Burgundians, and some Norwegians. Without a doubt, many of them were Frisians and Danes. But his-

Tory tells that they accepted as their common name in their new settlement that which was borne by a leading tribe, and to them Angeln was their homeland. The nook ,of Europe from which these newcomers came to Britain, to occupy it when the . Roman garrisons were called back to defend the old Empire from the threatening Goths, still abounds with names of English sound. ; Its ispeech is strikingly English in intonation, for old Frisian was but English with a difference; and there to-day you will meet English-looking folk at every corner. It is our national cradle; and not ours only, for it was from that same launch-' ing-place that the famous voyagers going; to e " Markland'• and '* Wineland the

Good" in, America five centuries before the days of t Cabot ' and Columbus, took . their departure. The English Colonies of Elizabeth's " spacious days" merely e followed the. trail those. far-off ; forefathers f. left, • and Britisher and American, digging f ( deep into their countries' past, meet at a last in that originating home in Northern ij Europe. • " " ' '' t The Viking Strain. x : The Viking blood has • not yet disappeared, albeit many of ,us have grown a trifle anaemic and lost our sea-legs. We a persist in going to sea in spite of mal- g de-mer. We thrill when we read of ex- c ploits upon the restless waves. Some- T thing almost forgotten rises in response to g tales of heroism in warship and merchant- s man. It is the old home calling, in the ? echoes of the cradle-song that inspired the creek-folk" viker" is the name in old c Angeln for creekof our first Motherland » to love the sea and venture far upon it. A We go years without hearing it, maybe; j and then, all at once, coming from no- ( where seemingly, the call resounds in , 'the hidden places of our spirits,; and the ) secret ;of a sea-strewn Empire, incurably , maritime, is laid bare. Who can wonder if he feels, in youth especially, a prompting to go to sea," or if a doctor soberly advises a long sea voyage as a cure ;for ills acquired in generations of land-faring .< quiet, or if the sight of a ' sail in the offing ; sets the blood-currents moving with new 1 speed?' It is inevitable, for did" not' a 1 Roman poet say of. our ancestors that the ; sea was their school of war and the storm ' their friend v _ _ 1 When our boys want to whittle little boats and sail model yachts and sneak away to fish and swim, it is what they , have • inherited through us—sometimes in that strange " dot-and-carry-one" way which seems to leave a generation untouched only to affect more violently the ! next—that is moving them. ■ When they run away to sea, seeking something that their home on 'land denies them, - they should be dealt with in mercy ' and understanding. Thev do but follow the wake of those ancient ancestors whose greatest lessons were learned on the tumbling floor of ocean and truest response to their vagrant- mood came on the wings of the wild wind.. vv-v I ;''-' Going into the Navy. ***■ " Why do you want to go into - the • Navy was asked of a bashful boy seek- ' ing admission to a naval school. " I never , S thought of doing anything else," he said. i The examining admiral and the schooli master silently exchanged glances; and r the boy was for lone days and nights re- , morsefully certain that his truthful, un- , buttoned answer had spoilt for ever his chances of admission. But in due time - he heard he was to enter: that answer i was as ■ good as anything he had written 3 in his examination, for it had in it the E age-long call of the sea. } :It was at a Navy League luncheon in } Auckland, on the occasion of Lord Jelli- } coe's visit in the New Zealand, that a » lieutenant-commander was asked by an- > other guest why he had joined the Navy/ 3 "I had no other idea after I was five/' E he said; "You see, my father was in the i Navy, and I took it for granted." If . we go far enough back, remembering Mr. 3 H. G. Wells' arithmetical argument about - our rapidly-multiplying receding ans cestry, we shall find reason to say that 3 we had fathers in. the Navy and there is ■i: enough of them left in us to make the call of the sea echo yet. In the wake of the Squadron will be 0 left an • awakened desire for a seafaring a life. It will not be the least of its lega- '- cies. The Navy itself should have recruit? t as a "result, and New Zealand's' share of >- the fleet's personnel be more eagerly forthi- coming.' But there is nothing essentially d belligerent in this persistent fascination is for "a life on the ocean wave." Those c- far-off ancestors of i our British race were o navigators first and warriors afterwards. ;e When all the battleships are scrapped in il a'great human enthusiasm of fellowship is a consummation desired ( invincibly howh ever long * deferred—the sea will still call. Ie The marches of Empire will have become •0 the highway ;of humanity, and the tur'o bulent sea still need the rule of - men to ir curb the furv of its white horses. In that t- day' sea traffic will be not less, but more, be and the- sailor be as great in the - eyes of of his fellows. In that day, though navies it "melt away," the spirit of the mighty s. deep will, help as of yore to make men.