Men who have risked their lives in battle, men who have been actually under fire, are affected by the circumstance in different ways. When the excitement of the fight is over, I think there are few who are really anxious for a renewal of the risks for the sake of the excitement, but they may be willing to engage again as bravely as before for other reasons--patriotism, for instance. If there is a certainty, or even probability, of those same or like risks being run again, or many times, then, in the intervals of repose, men see other things and other circumstances than the war and their own immediate surroundings out of proper focus. Self-preservation being the highest law, secondary laws, including all moral obligations, suffer a seeming decrease in value. The man whose life has been and at any moment may again be risked in battle, is not likely to consider that he owes the ten shillings in his pocket to some person far away, and that he ought to remit, but his one idea is the value of that ten shillings to him just then, where he is. What pleasure will it obtain for him at the moment, seeing that sooner than he can realize its value he may be dead? Quickly recurring risks of sudden death cause a deterioration of what may be called the moral fibre of the individual, and at the same time produce a marked hardening of character. The man whose life is in jeopardy, or soon may be, wants to find a way out into safety. He whose whole being is in danger of immediate extinction is unlikely to have any particular care for his reputation. Life is worth more than reputation; the latter may be retrieved if the former is saved, and at the moment life seems better worth saving than honour. Another feature is the growth of recklessness due to the greatness or number of the risks run. The man who has faced bullets with grim determination not to waver, will skate over the thinnest ice with a glad smile on his face. The greater excludes the less. The respectable man who has been forced to commit a murder for which he will be hanged, is not going to be deterred from assaulting a policeman through fear of incurring seven days’ imprisonment. Now the individual units which constitute the Russian navy are not drawn chiefly from a true fighting race. In the aggregate _esprit de corps_ means to them something else than it does to the members of a fighting regiment, and is concerned chiefly with matters of etiquette and other little things. Then they are not imbued with the traditions of a glorious past, as are, say, men of the British navy. There is not much reputation to lose, and the glory of achievement they have never experienced. Worse than all, the Japanese delivered the first blow, a heavy blow, one that damaged and for a time paralyzed the navy--it showed that fortune was with them. From the very first the Russians were disheartened--too badly beaten to retrieve their position.