if the alarm is given on your own ship, you grab mechanically for life-jacket, binoculars, pistol, and wool coat, and jump to your station, not knowing whether it is really a periscope or a stick floating along out of water.

JUNE 20.

Well, we got mail when we came into port this time, your letter of May 28 being the last one. I don't mind the frequent pot-shots the U-boats take at us, but doggone their hides if they sink any of our mail! We won't forgive them that.

My health is excellent, better than my temper, in fact. I am beginning to think that we are not getting our money's worth in this war. I want to have my blood stirred and do something heroic-à la moving-pictures. Instead of which it much resembles a campaign No joy-of- against cholera-germs or anything else which be found. is deadly but difficult to get any joy-of-battle out of.

battle to

Life so gray that shock of danger

is beneficial.

Do tell me everything you are doing, for it is up to you to make conversation, since there is so little of affairs at this end that I can talk about. It is a shame, for you always claimed that I never spoke unless you said something first; and now I am doing the same thing under cover of the letter.

JULY 2.

The other day, half-way out on the Atlantic, we sighted a periscope, and some one at the gun sent a shell skimming over the C-, who was in the way, and then the periscope turned out to be a ventilator sticking up over some wreckage. However, the incident was welcome. You have no conception of how gray life can get to be on this job, and the shock of danger, real or imaginary, is really beneficial, I think. All hands seem to be more cheerful under its influence.

JULY 4.

I was so glad to get your letters. A man who has a brave woman behind him will do his duty far better and, incidentally, stand more chance of coming back, than one who feels a drag instead of a push.

I am glad son had his first fight. You were perfectly right to make him go on. Mother used to tell how, when brother was a wee boy, he came home almost weeping, and said, "Mother, a boy hit me." Instead of comforting him, she said, "Did you hit him back?" It almost killed her, he was so utterly dumbfounded and hurt; but next time he hit back and licked.

wears

temper.

I am well but get rather jumpy at times. The life Strangely enough, it is always over more or nerves and less trivial matters. Every time we have a submarine scare, I feel markedly better for a while it seems to reestablish my sense of proportion.

It is a mighty nerve- and temper-wearing life -at sea nearly all the time and with the boat rolling and bucking like a broncho, you can't exercise. You can hardly do any work, but only hold on tight and wipe the salt spray from your eyes. Sometimes I have started to shave and found the salt so thick on my face that soap would not lather.

JULY 16.

passed

Things are the same as before with us. Time Time is passes quickly, with navigating, standing navigatwatch, and sleeping when you get a chance. ing watch, One day or two passes all too quickly. I wish sleeping. there were more to do in the shape of relaxation when we do get ashore. The people here are cordial enough, according to their lights, but those that we meet are practically all Army and Navy people, who have no abode. here themselves and are almost as much strangers as we are; and there is no resident popula

Little for diversion

in Ireland.

tion of that caste that would ordinarily open its doors to foreign naval officers.

Ireland is a poor country comparatively. A town of 50,000 here shows less in the way of facilities for diversion than the average town of 10,000 in the States.

Don't worry about my privations-"which mostly there ain't none." Such as they are, they are necessary and unavoidable; and, above all, we are fitted for them. You can't well sympathize with a man who is doing the thing he has longed for and trained for all his life. Mental Besides, physical privations are nothing; it is privations the mental ones that hurt. A soldier in the than trenches, with little to eat and nothing but a hole to sleep in, can feel happy all the sameparticularly if life has something in prospect for him if he lives. But a man out of work at home, sleeping in the park and panhandling for food, is much more to be pitied, though his immediate hardships may be no greater.

hurt more

physical

ones.

Anxious to be in action.

The weather over here is very passable at present, but they say it is simply hell off the coast in winter. However, somebody said the war will be over in November. I hope the Kaiser and Hindenburg know it, too!

me.

JULY 26. I haven't done anything heroic, which irks We would like to get in on the ground floor, while all hands are in a receptive mood, and before the Plattsburgers and other such death-defying supermen make it too common.

JULY 22.

Your two letters of July 7 and 8 came this afternoon, but I got the latter first and expected from what you said in contrition that there was hot stuff-gas-attack followed by bayonet-work-in the former; therefore I was all the more ashamed to find you had dealt

I

cheerful

from

so leniently and squarely with me. Why didn't A you come back with a long invoice of troubles letter of your own, as 99 per cent of women would? home. Evidently you are the one-per-cent woman. bitterly regretted my whines after having writ ten them, for their very untruth. Alas, how many people think the world is drab-colored and life a failure, and so have done or said something they regret all their lives, when a vegetable pill or a brisk walk would have changed their vision completely! Why is it that people sometimes deliberately hurt those. they have loved most in the world? I suppose it is because we are all really children at heart and want some one else to cry too. The other day Smith shamefacedly abstracted from the mail-box a letter to his wife, and tore it up, and I know-oh, I know!

At a husbands' meeting on the ship the other day, we all agreed that the heavy hand was the only way to deal with women; but it seemed on investigation that no one had actually tried it, the reason being apparently a well-grounded fear that our wives wouldn't like it.

but little

This war hasn't had as much action, variety, Danger, and stimulation for us as I would like. Danger action or there always is, but being little in evidence, variety. you have to prod your nerves to realize it rather than soothe them down. Lately, however, things have changed in a manner which, though involving no more danger, furnishes a somewhat greater mental stimulation, and thence is better for everybody. I regret to say that I am gaining in weight. It was my hope to come back thin and gaunt and interestinglooking. Instead of which, you will likely be mad as a hornet to find me so sleek, while you at home have done all the thinning down. Truth to tell, if you compare our relative peace and war status, you are much more at war than I am.

If you find son timid in some things, just remember that I was, too. Lots of things he will change about automatically. At his age I had small love for fire-crackers or explosives of any kind, but in two or three years, and without any prompting, I became really expert in guns and gunpowder. Try to get him The high- to realize that the very highest form of courage est form of is to be afraid to do a thing-and do it!

courage.

AUGUST 3.

Once in a while some one of us gets a torpedo fired at him, and only luck or quick seamanship saves him from destruction. Some day the torpedo will hit, and then the Navy Department will "regret to report." But the laws of probability and chance cannot lie, and as the total U-boat score against our destroyers so far is zero, you can figure for yourself that destroyers they will have to improve somewhat before the Kaiser can hand out many iron crosses at our expense.

U-boat

Score

against

is zero.

Picking

up

We had a new experience the other day when survivors. We picked up two boatloads of survivors from the, torpedoed without warning. I will say they were pretty glad to see us when we bore down on them. As we neared, they began to paddle frantically, as though fearful we should be snatched away from them at the last moment. The crew were mostly Arabs and Lascars, and the first mate, a typical comicmagazine Irishman, delivered himself of the following: "Sure, toward the last, some o' thim haythen gits down on their knees and starts calling on Allah; but I sez, sez I, 'Git up afore I swat ye wid the axe-handle, ye benighted haythen; sure if this boat gits saved 't will be the Holy Virgin does it or none at all, at all! Git up,' sez I."

The officers were taken care of in the wardroom-rough unlettered old sailormen, who