Though assuredly not with fear, nor with any sense of impending dissolution, the officers and men of the Pathshire—and, perhaps, of the whole Navy—regarded war with Germany, in more than one respect, as they regarded death, and assumed that the same certitude existed in their shipmates’ minds; so that the end of peace was no more questioned than the end of life, but only the manner of that end and the hour of its coming. Moreover, as from men’s ordinary speech speculation concerning the after-life is excluded, so these seamen did not speak, and seldom thought, of the time that would come when the war was over. The tale that German officers toasted “The Day” produced in the British Navy sentiments altogether different from those with which it inspired British civilians. In Service messes they smiled the national smile at this effusiveness of foreigners, just as they would have smiled at the gesticulations of Frenchmen or the exceeding politeness of Japanese. To them it seemed pompous and laughable to drink solemnly to War; they would as soon have been ceremonious concerning a Gunlayers’ Test. But this German proceeding aroused in them neither fear nor the resentment that springs from fear. They regarded the Germans who were said to drink this toast, not as wicked men rejoicing in the prospect of wickedness, but as professional men who overstepped somewhat the boundaries of “good form” in their too dramatic attitude towards their profession.

So long as they remained in or near their ships—that is, within the atmosphere of which Mr. Alter had spoken, and beyond the influence of their civilian friends—naval officers saw the coming war with such concentration on its professional aspect that observant visitors were amazed and sometimes shocked. War would come; Germany would be the enemy and the aggressor; but the certainty of this aggression seemed no better reason for bitterness than a chess opponent’s initial move of his King’s Pawn. It was attractive to wonder whether the King’s Pawn would be moved or whether some other opening would be selected. It was delightful to suggest the defence that Jellicoe and Prince Louis would adopt. But, just as chess players are careful for the game’s intricacies and not for stakes, so naval officers thought of the war in terms of manoeuvred battle squadrons and destroyer flotillas rather than of the destinies of nations. And they assumed that German officers, being likewise professional men, were no more interested than they were in those aspects of war that were not strictly professional. They imputed to the Ober-Leutnant as he stood, wine-glass in hand, no motive more sinister than a desire to prove professional superiority; and, being themselves convinced that they could outmanoeuvre and out-gun him, they were unperturbed that he should drink to his sentimental heart’s content.

On the China Station the naval officer’s concern with war was, perhaps, more exclusively technical than elsewhere. In home waters the Germans were as unfamiliar as bogey-men, and the English newspapers were near at hand. A speech or leading article was potent to awake, even in the naval mind, some of those vague misgivings concerning Wilhelmshaven upon which vulgar opinion on foreign affairs was at that time based. But the newspapers that reached China were stale and little read; and—most powerful antidote for political animosity—the German Fleet was a familiar sight, and its officers were frequent guests.

The field of thought concerning war was thus circumscribed. When the time came, the China Squadron would fight its own independent battle in its own waters. The chess-board was set. The opposing force was known and visible. Many a time in Wardroom and Gunroom were the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Leipzig, and NÜrnberg compared, knot for knot, gun for gun, armour for armour, torpedo-tube for torpedo-tube, with the Pathshire and her comrade ships. No doubt the Germans made similar calculations; no doubt they, too, cast their eyes sometimes towards Japan. But, in a subtle manner, the very closeness of the association of those who were ultimately to be enemies robbed that association of bitterness. The Germans were excellent seamen, and pleasant companions at dinner. They danced well, drank well, laughed well, and could sing a good song. When Fate ended both dance and song the ensuing duel would be a gentlemanly trial of skill, intensely interesting, a settling of knotty arguments, a test, for instance, of what the Engineer-Commander could do with his main engines. The gun-fire silent at last, the survivors would be picked up and given whisky, or, if the weather was cold, sloe gin. The battle, important to civilians for its effects upon trade-routes, Eastern prestige, and a vast complexity of political issues, would be to those who took part in it a thrilling conclusion to a technical work which for many weary years had been hard reading.

It would be a conclusion, an end of a book to which no sequel had been planned. After it, as after death, would be but that blank fly-leaf whose whiteness is more emphatic than the written word Finis. A man whose whole life has been devoted to one object scarce dares to look beyond its attainment. The business man speaks uneasily of the years that are to follow his retirement; the historian wonders how he will occupy his time when his great work has gone to press; the mother turns from contemplation of the hour in which her child, made man by her pain and endeavour, goes from her into the world. And the naval officer looked infrequently and with reluctance beyond the crowning of his work.

But there were moments when it was difficult so conveniently to restrict the vision of the future. Rumours of war were continual reminders of war’s imminence, and, therefore, pointers towards the years of undefined purpose that would succeed it. As each rumour was proved false, it was impossible, in the days of reaction, to avoid some speculation as to the results which would have ensued had the rumour been well-founded; just as it is impossible for a man who has survived an attack of that disease by which he knows his end must come not to look a little wistfully beyond the gates of death. And soon after that night on which John had, for other reasons, asked himself to what end his present life was directed, there came whisperings of war to make the question more insistent. Once again the rumour was seen to lack foundation; a leaf in the great technical volume was turned excitedly; but not yet had that page been reached upon which was written Chapter the Last. But John knew, as did they all, that they were near the end now—very near the end.

“I hope it comes,” he said to Hartington, “before we leave China. Out here it will be on a smaller scale. We shall be able to see the whole battle at once, and it will be our battle. It will be simpler, more clearly cut than that vast affair in the North Sea.”

“Do you look forward to war?”

“What else is there to which we can look forward? It’s our training. It’s what we are here for.”

“It means untold suffering—mourning, poverty, bitterness for years to come.”

“That may be,” said John, “but it’s our job.”

“You are a queer fellow—an idealist one moment and a shouting militarist the next.”

“No, I’m not a militarist, though I do say I want war. I shouldn’t want war if there was anything else on God’s earth that I could want with a reasonable hope of obtaining it. I should take no pleasure in war itself apart from the momentary excitement of the thing; and certainly I’m not dreaming of political gains through war, which is the part of the genuine militarist. I want it just as one wants a thunderstorm to break quickly that one knows must break some time. I’m sick of the tension, of wasting precious years in preparing and waiting. If the end of all our work is to be ‘mourning, poverty, and bitterness for years to come,’ if that’s what we are living for, I want an end of it. I don’t know what is beyond. I don’t care. But, at any rate, it will be a clean sheet—a clean sheet to spoil may be, but a chance to make a fresh start.”

“A chance for you to make a fresh start?”

“I mean—I mean the world in general.”

“But you?”

“Oh, I’m a naval officer for good and all. It’s different for me.”

“Our trade’s going to be an odd one after the war. It may become more or less superfluous. There may be a great pensioning-off.”

“I’ve thought about that—‘after the war.’ But I dare say there’ll be work for us to do.”

“Yes,” said Hartington, “but work with what object? Think of it: the work we do from day to day gives precious little satisfaction in itself. I suppose everyone—no matter in what line of business—has one supreme ambition that overshadows all other ambitions. But in most lives, while a man waits for his Great Attainment he is kept going by smaller successes, intermediate achievements that have at least some of the qualities of permanence. The statesman waiting to pass his Great Reform passes smaller measures that are something—something that stands. Or the novelist writing his intermediate novels, or the architect designing the houses that are to precede his Great Design, or the shopkeeper, even, opening a new branch here and a new branch there, stepping-stones to the Great Store of his dream, but each a substantial achievement in itself; all these people know that, even if the Great Dream comes to naught, they have constructed something more durable than themselves. But the naval officer accomplishes nothing by the way. I suppose Guns is glad if a battle practice goes well, but it all ends in a round of drinks; no one is the happier for it. No one is a whit the happier for anything we do.”

“The practical economists would tell you that we are indirectly constructive because we protect commerce,” John said.

“The boy who frightens birds with his clacker is constructive in that sense. So is the hangman with his rope. No, that’s too shallow a foundation on which to build comfort. All our eggs are in one basket. War is everything to us. And when the war is over and we can say there will not be another war for fifty years, perhaps a hundred years—certainly not in our time, what then? How are we going to live through routine? What heart shall we put into preparation for a remote possibility?”

“And we shall still be young men.”

“We shall have all our lives before us.”

John rested his head on his hand as if he were tired. “And even now,” he said, “when at least this wonderful achievement of ours is in the future and not in the past, it seems a poor thing to me. I may be a Sub when it comes, or I may be a Lieutenant—anyhow, a cog in the machine.”

“The Lord knows when it’s coming. We may be Admirals by then.”

John thought. He was perceiving a revealing truth. “I don’t want to be an Admiral,” he said.

“But that, in a naval officer, is heresy and disaster,” Hartington answered, with a hidden smile. “You ought to want to be an Admiral. At the age of twelve you promised, as it were, to love, honour, and obey.”

“I did want to be an Admiral—then.”

“But you must want it now. You must make yourself want it.”

“Because there’s nothing else to want?”

“Just that.” Hartington was determined that, for his own sake, John must be made to see his position with perfect clearness. “But in time of war,” he went on, “an Admiral’s position is different from his position now.”

“The chances are heavily against his having a command.”

“Oh, for that matter, the chances are heavily against success in anything. To reckon on that basis is hopeless. It’s no good to count on failure.... Imagine you have absolute success, and reckon backwards from that, if you like. Imagine that there is war. You are the Admiral commanding the Home Fleet. You have—you have the destinies of the world in your hands: it would be little less than that. Doesn’t there seem something fine——”

“Assuming, for the sake of comparison, an equivalent success elsewhere, I’d rather shape destiny with other tools.”

“As Prime Minister?”

John smiled for a moment. Then he said seriously: “Or write a great book. Or—oh, there are dozens of better implements.”

“But suppose—and this is the ultimate test—suppose you won a Trafalgar?”

John looked up quickly, realizing whither he had been led. Their eyes met. “I don’t think Trafalgar would make me happy,” he said.

He picked up the red lamp that was swinging within a few inches of the cabin floor and placed it on his knees. Hartington settled himself deeply in his great wicker chair.

“If that’s so,” he said, “you ought not to be in the Service. You ought to get out of it, and try to write that great book.”

John put the lantern from him hurriedly and rose. “Do you think I don’t know that?” he demanded, with a tremor in his voice.

“You didn’t know it sixty seconds ago.”

“I did. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

John paused with one foot outside the cabin door.

“Do you want to be an Admiral yourself?” he challenged.

“That question does not arise,” Hartington answered.

Because he could not trust himself to speak again John went out, his eyes aching as before a storm of tears.