THE UNDECORATED HERO.
(TO Tits EDITOR OM THE "SPECTATOR.")
feel sure that a large proportion of your readers will agree with me in regretting that the bravery of Captain Freeman, of s.s. ' Roddam,' has, so far, secured but little recognition. To those who have read the heroic story it may well seem impossible to recall a more striking instance of human bravery and endurance. The leader of a forlorn hope knows what he may expect to be his fate,—the stinging impact of the invisible bullet, the volleying fragments of the bursting shell, or the chill thrust of the deadly bayonet. His bravery none will dispute. And surviving, his reward ? The Victoria Cross, the D.S.O., or high brevet rank. But how in.
comparably severer the test that the Captain of the Roddam ' had to undergo? The suddenness of the catastrophe, the up- heaval of the ocean depths, the appalling gloom of "a darkness that could be felt," the thundering explosions of a mephitic vapour that threatened suffocation with its sulphurous fumes, —this "peep into the jaws of hell" might well be held to justify "the failing of men's heart for fear" on the part of the bravest of the brave. And yet, in spite of this nearness of What might well have appeared the advent of the terrors of the last Great Day, our English hero, undaunted by the awful scene, unshaken by the pain of his own burning flesh, brought his good ship, scorched, rent, and riven, to a haven of refuge. And his reward ? A service of plate from the Board of Trade! It has been officially announced that the regulations' for the bestowal of the Albert Medal render that decoration inapplicable to his case! Surely it has not come to this, that England has no way of honouring the hero of a deed which, in coolness and dauntless courage, is absolutely unparalleled in the history of a nation of brave men,—nay, in the history Walton, 3.0., Norfolk.
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