A FLAW IN THE ENEMY'S ARMOUR.
[German Admiralty. "We propose to attack all British merchantmen at sight."
Great Britain. "In that case our merchantmen will defend themselves."
German Admiralty. "O well, if they go and do a dastardly thing like that, of course we shall be justified in attacking them."
See paraphrase, issued to the Press by the German Embassy at Washington, of a Note handed to the State Department by Count Bernstorff.]
UNWRITTEN LETTERS TO THE KAISER.
No. XV.
(From Samuel Porter, generally known as Shining Sammy, aboard H.M.S. ——— in the North Sea.)
Your High Mightiness,—They tell me, and by what I can read about it it's right, that you 're very angry with us sailormen. Well, you can go on being angry for all we care. Your being annoyed don't do us any manner of injury, although I daresay it frightens some of the chaps that hang round you and go on licking your boots till your head swells. But we're not built that way. We've got our duty to do and we're going to do it, even if we do manage to hurt your Imperial German feelings—yours and old Turps's and all your other Admirals' into the bargain. If we hear of you setting to work to smash all your own crockery and kick the stuffing out of the Sunday chairs in the parlour, and tear up the carpets, and put your fist through the window-panes, d'you think that's going to make any difference to us?
I had an uncle once, my mother's half-brother, but much older than her, their father having married a second time when he was well on in years. He was just one of your sort was my uncle, a big man and proud, and couldn't bear to be contradicted by his family. Consequence was his wife and all my cousins used to tremble before him, and it was "Get your father's boots and be quick about it," or "Sally, you're sitting in your father's favourite chair; get a move on you, do;" and all that kind of thing, till he got to think he couldn't do wrong. Well, one night he come home in a temper through slipping up on a piece of banana skin and the pavement being a bit too hard for him. First thing he did when he got home, after kicking the door in, was to fall out with my aunt about there being no sausages for supper, and then they had it up and down through the whole house with him carrying on like a madman, until at last the policeman come in very quiet and sudden though the open door and asked to know what all the noise and scatteration meant. You never saw a man change so quick as that half-uncle of mine. All the wind went out of him pop, and he turned as quiet as a lamb, and said there'd been a slight misunderstanding; and ever afterwards, when he began to look ugly, my aunt could tone him down by whispering the word "misunderstanding."
It strikes me you're just such another as uncle, and you'll have to knuckle down same as he did. You're not going to take command of the sea by shouting out loud that you've got it. We're there to see to that, and don't you forget it. All this talk of yours about sinking innocent merchant ships and sending their crews to Kingdom Come is what a real sailorman can't swallow. It only shows what you and Admiral Turps and the rest of you are made of. Mind, I don't say you're not capable of it if you think you won't get your own skins hurt. You've shown yourselves great chaps for the sneaking game, but you can't keep the old rule of the sea, which orders a man to save life as well as destroy it. You're a great hand at blowing poor women and children to bits at fortified towns like Scarborough and Whitby, but when your Admiral got his chance of picking a few fellows out of the sea at Coronel, what did he do? Sailed away and left them to drown, and then said the sea was too rough. No real sailor could have said that, or even thought it, for a sailor thinks of the waves as his brothers and the winds as his sisters, and when the big guns have done speaking he's out to rescue them as can't help themselves no more. When our men picked up yours they didn't stop to think about it or reason it out to themselves. They did it prompt because it was the old rule and they had to keep it or look on themselves as curs. I'm sorry to have to say all this because I'm not one for boasting; but the long and the short of it is that you don't understand the sea and your men don't understand the ways of sailors. And that's why I think you're not going to out us just yet. I don't respect you, not a bit, and when you're angry and go racketing about the world, you mustn't take it unkind of me if you hear me laugh. There, I feel better now.
Yours, Shining Sammy.
The War in the Air.
In view of the alarming rumours as to the German preparations for invading us it is really comforting to learn, from a headline in The Vancouver Daily Province (B.C.), that there is—
"No foundation for Report of German Warships over Dover."
B.C. is evidently not so far behind the times as it sounds.
