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The responsibility for the publication of this book lies with me, and with me alone. I trust that that great “Silent Service,” one of whose finest traditions is to “do” and not to “talk,” will see in it no indiscretion.

To state that these pages make no claim to literary merit seems almost superfluous, since they are simply a boy’s story of ten months of the Great War as he saw it. In deference to the said tradition the names of officers and ships concerned have been suppressed—those of the midshipmen mentioned are all fictitious.

The story has been compiled from a narrative written by my son during a short spell of sick leave in December 1915. Considering that all his diaries were lost when his ship was sunk, it may at least be considered a not inconsiderable feat of memory. Originally it was intended only for private circulation, but many who have read it have urged me to put it into print; and I have decided to do so in the hope that their prediction that it would prove of interest to the public may be justified.

In so far as was practicable, I have tried to tell the story in my son’s own words; but it may possibly be argued that at times words and phrases are such as would not normally be used by a boy of barely sixteen. To that charge I can only reply that in the main even the words are his own, and I have faithfully reproduced his ideas and opinions.

Those who have come in contact with the boys who left us as children, and returned to us dowered by their tremendous experiences with knowledge and insight so far in advance of their years, will find nothing incongruous in reflections commonly foreign to such extreme youth. It is one of the logical results of the fiery crucible of War.

Let it be remembered that these boys have looked Death in the face—not once only, but many times; and that, like our soldiers in the trenches—who no longer say of their “pals” “He is dead,” but only “He has gone west”—they have learned to see in the Great Deliverer not a horror, not an end, but a mighty and glorious Angel, setting on the brows of their comrades the crown of immortality; and so when the call comes they, like Sir Richard Grenville of old, “with a joyful spirit die.”

What would be unnatural is that their stupendous initiation could leave them only the careless children of a few months back.

The mobilisation of the Dartmouth Cadets came with a shock of rather horrified surprise to a certain section of the public, who could not imagine that boys so young could be of any practical utility in the grim business of War. There was, indeed, after the tragic loss of so many of them in the Cressy, the Aboukir, and the Hogue, an outburst of protest in Parliament and the Press. In the first shock of grief and dismay at the sacrifice of such young lives, it was perhaps not unnatural; but it argued a limited vision. Did those who agitated for these Cadets to be removed from the post of danger forget, or did they never realise, that on every battle-ship there is a large number of boys, sons of the working classes, whose service is indispensable?

It seemed to me that if my son was too young to be exposed to such danger, the principle must apply equally to the son of my cook, or my butcher, or my gardener, whose boys were no less precious to them than mine was to me.

In the great band of Brothers who are fighting for their country and for the triumph of Right and Justice there can be no class distinction of values. Those who belong to the so-called “privileged classes” can lay claim only to the privilege of being leaders—first in the field and foremost at the post of danger. It is the only possible justification of their existence; and at the post of danger they have found their claim to priority hotly and gloriously contested by the splendid heroes of the rank and file.

Presumably the Navy took our boys because they were needed, and no one to-day will feel inclined to deny that those Dartmouth Cadets have abundantly proved their worth.

For the rest, if there be any merit in this record, the credit lies with the boy who provided the material from which it has been written: for any feebleness, inadequacy, or indiscretion the blame must fall on that imperfect chronicler—

His Mother