E 620.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12061, 17 July 1917, Page 3

E 620.

A FLOATING LEGATION. (J. M. N. JEFFRIES, in the "Daily Mail.") ATHENS, April. If you sail out of tho harbour town of the Pirams for half an hour or so towards Snlamis and take the third wave on the left you will come to a certain ship. She is a little difficult to place, for she is not a. battleship nor a cruiser nor a submarine nor a scout nor yet a " long grey sinister shape," which, as is known, is tho way all the best admirals refer to a destroyer. Grey, indeed, she is, and seems at first sight an ordinary grey vessel with a funnel and two masts and sides with portholes in them, and two hawser chains and boats on davits, and a deck with deckchairs on it and persons asleep in them.

The plain mercantile red ensign hangs over her stern, and plain mercantile people seem to inhabit her; you begin to set her down as an unremarkable object, a mere Smith among ships. But as yout boatmen under the combined propulsive effect of oars and sail and shouting and pure garlic-power bring you nearer you perceive that there are two things about, her not quite commonplace : she displays on her deck-edge well forward a species of giant metal visiting-card with a numeral on it, and round her foremast-top there clings a rather singular Union Jack, bearing in its centre tho Royal arms surrounded by a wreath. The vessel is indeed no ordinary one—she is bis Majesty's Legation E 620. This title, I acknowledge, requires some sort of expounding. No doubt in that golden future when every man has become his own »State there will be representatives galore, but at present wo are not accustomed to such a profusion of Legations. And still less are we accustomed, in the strict sense, to our Legations being at sea. The simple fact, is that when the Allied Ministers bad delivered their ultimatum to King Constantino's Government last December and had to leave Athens until full reparation had been given, they took up, most of them, their quarters on board a ship which, after a. short spell in Piraeus harbour, sailed out 10 Snlamis and lias been there since. E 620 was that ship. DIPLOMATIC ARK. E 620 is, of course, a. nnm do guerre, but owing to tho position of its visiting card it lias become well known, and there is no great secret about it. A jaundiced section of opinion maintains that the figures represent the attitude of Lloyds towards the cralt itself, hut. this is an undeserved slight. .Before tlie war E620 was a respectable and respected passenger ship on a. recognised Mediterranean run. and after she had. like many of her kind, made a runaway war-marriage into the Navy and become a numeral, she did yeoman supply sendee at SuvJa Bay. (We .set much store by her, agrees the officer who was there.) For some reason her original maiden name is inclined to stick to lier, and the Athens Press invariably uses it, adapted for Greek readers.

Soon she will have been three months the floating home of the Legation, and surely never in the whole course of diplomacy has there been such competition with Noah or such diplomatic life as is lived in her or in connection with her. At tho beginning of her career as a Legation she was more like a sublimated emigrant ship than anything else.

the Ministers quitted. Athens tke French Envoy hoarded a French cruiser, and tho Italian Minister also had a cruiser at litis disposal, but E 620 bad to houso not the .British Legation only, but also those of Russia, Serbia, Belgium and Rumania, suitable ships under these flags'not being available. And a Legation means not only Minister and counsellor and attaches and secretaries, but also their wives and families and' a numerous body of secretaries' secretaries and counsellors' councillors, to say nothing of attendants, stewards, saiJors, signalmen, liaison-privates, and the rest of the humbler impersonnel of a diplomatic establishment. And E 620 is not a largo ship with a Louis XVI. restaurant.

She has a. single dining-room lit by 6ix portholes on either side; two oblong tables in the midst of it and threa along each side, impinging on lengthy horsehair settees in once-crimson, which shine to the eye and have reached the chevaux do friso stage. At the usual hours the tables are spread with cloths .for meals: then afterwards tho cloths are removed and most of -tho work of the Legation continues on the same tables and on tho same spot. There is a room farther forward, indeed, which is used as a chancellery. Over its' door is an inscription which says, ""First-ciass Smoking Room,'' but it is just a box capable, of holding at the most ten fir.st-elass smokers, and it is generally believed that the halfdozen members of the Legation who work therein have to be unpacked from amid all tho papers they have accumulated by tho day's end. DIPLOMATISTS AT WORK. As for the cabins, they are so small and so fully occupied that they are fit for nothing but the losing of consciousness in them at night. They satisfy that irreducible* marine minimum, like to the agricultural three acres and a cow, of two bunks and a strip of carpet. So the central saloon receives practically everyone- on board all day long. By some* secret of construction, too, all gangways, passages, staircases, appear to lead into it, and the traffic across tho breadth of the vessel passes through it.

It is extraordinary to think of all the really difficult and important work that lias been carried through so well in this room under such circumstances. In tho days of the crisis, round the dark table in tho far right corner, were Great Britain and Franco and Russia! and Italy and Belgium and Rumania and Serbia, in tho persons of their Ministers, in deep conference: at tho tabic beside them were the military attaches, plunged in papers, with lines of communication lengthening on their foreheads; facing the Minister.?, six paces across the saloon, round another table, debated tirpd-looking commercial and shipping authorities; from the tables in the centre rose tho incessant batter and rasp of massed typewriters in storm, reports issuing from them like protruding tongues, secretaries and secretaries' secretaries impendent upon them. At the mid left table were other men busy with telegram and letters and memoranda or conversing together for the State; and all this was in a medley of languages, and amid the confusion of murmurs and continu-

ous noise a woman or two ever seemed to bo seated in the foreground, knitting or doing some unending piece of embroidery, looking across quizzically at the statesmen from time to ti7no, as who should say, " Well, well, this is all very important and triumphant, of course, but it is we women who watch over you through it all and keep the world trim."