On my way home last week I found myself alongside
a stranger holding a ticket for a neighbouring railway station, serving a village so small that I knew every inhabitant, at least by sight. He told me his name, which appears in the Elizabethan register of that very village—and is still common locally.
He proved to be a sailor in the mercantile marine, coming home after seven years' continuous absence from home. His base had been in Australia : he knew every big port in the Pacific and most East of Suez. Now, with his ship in dry-dock, he had a month on shore and he hoped to get a few of his former playmates to go to sea.
I had heard much in Parliament of the grievances of sailors, bad food, bad quarters, and long hours : his talk was an encouraging antidote. He was drawing Do a month and saving £50 or so a year easily enough : the life suited him : climates did not trouble him—as his looks showed : he felt sure that there were boys in the village who would gladly " chance their arm " and he would look after them to start with.
He did not hide his excitement as he neared his destination. How things had changed ! New houses, new lands under plough, some trees cut down, others grown faster than one would expect : the river cleaned and straightened, and a new bridge. He was shaking hands with the astonished porter before the train stopped.
I met him three weeks later : not a single boy was willing to go to sea, or anywhere else for that matter. Either they lacked enterprise or else their selfish parents lacked sense and discouraged them. They seemed content to be garden-boys and errand-boys, pot-boys and house-boys.
He had found one good lad who was willing to go with him, and he an Irishman. The experience disconcerted him : things had changed a lot in seven years. Perhaps it was " this education " : the village schoolmaster, whom he visited, seemed uninterested. He was asked whether he could get the dole now and the old age pension some day ? He had never thought about either, never having been without a ship. Able seamen and junior engineers are hard to find today, though the carrying capacity of the British mercantile marine, relatively to our domestic needs, is only half what it was in 1914.
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