than one on land, and to have a mine exploded under him is perhaps the eventuality which a soldier fears more than anything else. On land, the thundering release of a giant breath from out of the earth, a monstrous pall of fragments of soil, stones, and dust ... perhaps of fragments more ghastly, at sea, a thundering pound, a column of water which seems to stand upright for a second or two and then falls crashing on whatever is left of the vessel. _Quelle monde!_ There is a distinct difference between the psychology of the soldier and that of the sailor. A soldier of any army is sure to be drilled, and drilled, and drilled again till he becomes what he ought to be, a cog in an immense machine scientifically designed for the release of violence; a sailor, drilled scientifically enough but not so machinally, preserves some of the ancient freedom of the sea. Then, too, the soldier with his bayonet is a fighting force; the sailor, though prepared for it, himself rarely fights, but works a fighting mechanism, ... the ship. The battleship X may sink the cruiser Y, but there is rarely a "_corps a corps_" such as takes place for instance in a disputed shell crater. Thus removed from the baser brutalities of war, the sailor never reveals that vein of Berserker savagery which soldiers will often reveal in a conquered province. As a class, sailors are the best-natured, good-hearted souls in the world. Rough some may be, some may be scamps, but brutal, never. Moreover, living under a discipline easier to bear than the soldiers, Jack has not the sullen streaks that overtake betimes men under arms. Of course, he grumbles, enlisted men are not normal if they don't grumble, but Jack's grumbling is as nothing compared to the fierce, smothered hate for things in general which every soldier sometimes feels. I would follow the sea, because I am a lover of the mystery and beauty of the sea, and because my comrades would be sailormen. I would knock at the Navy's door because, after all is said and done, the naval power is the ultima ratio of this titanic affair. I have seen many of the great scenes of this war, among them Verdun on the first night of the historic battle, but nothing that I saw on land impressed me as did my first view of the British Grand Fleet in its northern harbour, ... the dark ships, the hollow ships, rulers of the past, rulers of the future, unconquered and unconquerable. H.B.B. The Parson Capen House, Topsfield, 1919. END THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N.Y. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Full Speed Ahead, by Henry B. Beston