SAILORS' AND SOLDIERS' JOURNALS.

[COMMUNICATED.]

ACOLLECTION of the little journals published in the Fleet and at the Front (or on the way there) will be a priceless possession in the far days to come, when the history of the Great War can be written without rancour or repining. If the so-called " scientifio " historians, those busy sifters of the dust of circumstance so numerous in German Universities, survive into that more humane era, they will probably refuse to consider these journals as historical evidence. But all who accept Brunetiere's definition of history as the art of living in bygone centuries will rejoice over them with great joy, smelling the mud of the deep trenches or the spindrift of the North Sea (the British Ocean) on their hastily set-up pages and learning from them what the plain fighting-man thought of it all. To appreciate the historical value of such documents you have only to ask yourself the question—What would not students of Literae Humaniorea give for records of the marching-songs of Han- nibal's or Caesar's veterans or for an abundance of the cheery sea- chaff for which we search in vain the severe chronicles of Greece and Rome ? We know something about the great soldiers and sailors of antiquity. Hannibal, it is true, is lost to us, for nobody is so foolish as to believe Livy's sketch of him as the incarnation of inherited hatred. [There is a touch of the egotistical Teuton in all the Roman historians ; they lack the Voltairean wit of Herodotus or the wise disinterestedness of Thucydides.] But we are well acquainted with Pompey, the master of amphibious warfare, who broke up the thalassocracy of the Mediterranean pirates, and with Caesar, whose driving-power of will is defined in Lucan's mightiest line :— " Nil actum credens dum quid superesset agendum."

But of the soldiers and sailors, the sutlers and the oarsmen, who were unreasoning instruments in the hands of Greek and Roman conquerors we know nothing from within—we cannot say what kind of human beings inhabited their equipment and system of evolutions. It is possible, perhaps, to make a shrewd guess at the spiritual outlook of the citizen soldier of Athens, or even of the professional soldier

of Sparta. After all, the Englishman is very like a Greek grown old, deep waters crossed and many a camp-fire changed to gaunt ashes. But the Roman legionary evades us strangely—two or three speci- mens of his chaff, one or two of his marching-songs, are all we have of the man-in-himself, known to be a constant type for some five centuries of incessant warfare. It is a great pity, a sad loss to history, that we know him no better—for, though whatever he did In defiance of discipline was mercilessly punished, he could say anything ho liked against any authority. What personality-sketches of famous generals we should have, to humanize Roman history, If only his punning nicknames* and Plutarchan anecdotes had been preserved in field journals.

A thousand years hence there will be no such lack of intimate information about the Allied Armies. No similar records, however,

will be available in the case of Germany, for no German soldiers' and sailors' journals have appeared, and, what is still more strange and significant, no camp ditties have been evolved in praise of Hindenburg comparable with those in which " Father Blucher" with his huge, flaring pipe was celebrated a century ago. Hinden- burg is the civilian's idol ; the soldiers do not idolize him, at any rate to the extent of paying tributes in cheery doggerel to his rough fatherliness. The truth is that no living German general is a soldier's general as Blucher was, and, even more manifestly, Wellington. If a Blucher existed to-day, his paternal influence would be intercepted by the icy, impersonal outrecuiclance (there is no modern word for it) of the modern German officer. It is not difficult to understand why there are no German trench journals; such things eannot come into being without the approval and help of officers, and it is impossible to think of German officers taking any trouble to provide mere cannon fodder with a chance of " ragging " things as they are, including the authorities, with pen and penciL In the Allied Armies, however, officers and men are all one brotherhood, and the mutual chaff of a trench journal is not feared as a form of insubordination.

There are one or two Russian trench journals, but I have not yet succeeded in getting copies of them. They do not abound on the

• such as Biocrius Mao. East Front for two reasons : in the first place, the Russian soldier, even if he can read, looks upon reading as a pain rather than a pleasure ; secondly, he could not pay for a regimental journal out of his field pittance of eighteenpence a month. In the French Army they are abundant ; more than a hundred, most of them cyclostyled and some written by hand, are to be seen at the library of the Arsenal in Paris. But the grim humour of the paha and their abstruse field slang and tortuous badinage would require a separate article for elucidation in English—so far as an Englishman, bound not to be Rabelaisian in print, is capable of elucidating such obscure and rather perilous matters. On lea aura is the text, written or unwritten, of these French fighting journals, though they do not condescend to songs of hatred against the Boches. The mood of the French soldier, as revealed in his single-sheet field journals, is a silent smiling mercilessness. In the English journals of the kind, however, the evil enemy is but seldom mentioned at all. He is taken for granted as a species of cosmical nuisance, like dirty weather or the mud of Flanders, or the specific microbe of a disease.

Fleet journals are far less numerous than those published at the land Front or on the way there, perhaps because sea-time leaves so little time for writing—the sailor's letter home is much shorter than the soldier's as a rule. For all that, some of the comparatively few Fleet journals are admirable productions. One of the best was the Maidstone Magazine, produced and published on board the mother-ship of a submarine flotilla. It is packed with chaff which is beyond a remote civilian, who cannot be expected to find answers to such questions as : " What is the truth about E16's ' deck- cloths ? " and " Is disguising oneself as a mackerel a natural gift, or can any one do it Y " Otherwise parodies were the feature of the organ of 8th Flotilla-land, one of the cleverest being a submarine

" Nightmare " in Gilbertian verse :-

" You dream you are crossing the North Sea and tossing about in a submarine cranky,

And your crew they are such that they talk Double Dutch, and you swear at them blankety, blanky ;

Very angry you grow when they put on a blow that shoots you right out of the water. As you rise in the air you've a Zeppelin scare and are ready for all kinds of slaughter ;

Then feeling quite proud you ram at a cloud, letting off your tor- pedoes at random.

And just as you fire comes a Marconi wire to tell you the never mind's banned 'em."

And so and so on—it is a most lively and laughable parody. The North Sea Times, formerly published aboard the lost 'King Edward VII.,' was a lower-deck journal, in which Clinker Cole, a super-stoker, had his say, and the Marine (whom all sailors accept as a master of invective, the official chaplain, in fact, for all occasional commina- tion services) was outspoken, within limits, and a fine moving description was often given of various phases of the life of the Battle Fleet. The Exmouth Express, which is still alive and arrives from time to time from somewhere in the Mediterranean, is also friendly to parodies. Certain rhymes written in the autumn of 1914 intelligently anticipated the battle of Jutland :- " One two, one two, the thirteen-fives

Went hurtling o'er the dull gray sea. He knocked 'em stiff and some did sink, The others were too scared to flee.

' And hast thou slain the Kaiserfleet ?

Come to my arms, my brave John J. We now have nothing more to fear, The war will soon be o'er, Hooray 1' "

Here are some questions from a " General Knowledge Paper " in the same entertaining journal :—

" What is a Watch Cag ' ? Who are entitled to take part in this proceeding

What is a' Balloon ascent' ? Describe briefly what means you would take to secure the highest ascent.

What is an Ormolu Nosebag' ? And what are the indications for the use of this article ?

State carefully how many times a ship may be painted during a month in the same place and on the same side of it.

Describe carefully the method you would employ to obtain a' Bird.' A ship containing members of the V.A.D. having arrived in harbour, describe (a) what methods you would employ to become acquainted with such members, and (b) how you would ensure that only a limited number of Wardroom Officers secured this acquaintance, such officers being neither senior nor junior to yourself."

Even Mr. Kipling would probably fail to get half-marks on this paper, which reminds one of Mahan's saying that the living instru- ments of sea power are a people apart, little known to landsmen, who find their ways incomprehensible. But it is easy to appreciate the humour and high spirits of those among their journals which do not exist merely to convey war news to a ship's company from day to day. And the rough sea-verse they contain, alas 1 infrequently, will survive the polished professional stuff and in the far future have the soul-stirring power of the Border ballads as Sir Philip Sidney felt it.