[Illustration: UPPER—A STORM. CENTER—WAR PAINT. LOWER—DISEMBARKING TROOPS (LIVERPOOL).] LIVERPOOL J. M. The first liberty party from the _Leviathan_ while in Liverpool, left the ship at 4.30 P. M. on December 24th, and was due back at noon on the 25th, which was Christmas, and it turned out to be a gloomy, cheerless Christmas, for most of the boys had never been away from home on that sacred day before. Their first impression of the city was a poor one—dimly-lighted streets, cold rain, dark alleys, and foggy river. Dismal, indeed, after leaving a land of sunshine and bright lights and coming to a land mostly of darkness and rain. The sun did not rise during this time of the year until nearly 9 o’clock, at least that was the time that it was supposed to rise, but it was seldom that we had the pleasure of seeing it even for a full hour. Sunset was at 3.30 P. M., or in the vicinity, so it will be seen that the days were real short during this season. To think that we were to spend two months or more in this country! We certainly were sorry for the men who were stationed there and we would not change places with them for a Navy clothing contract. The city appeared remarkably true to type and character described by Conan Doyle in his books. Without a doubt our impression would have been much better if we had been there in time of peace. We did not realize the trials that England had been through in the years before we entered the war. Her best men had gone to fight and her streets had to be kept dark because of air raids. Then there was a food problem. The German U-boats sunk everything possible that came within the range of a torpedo or a gun, so it may be seen that England depended mostly on her ships to bring food to her brave people and armies. When our crew went ashore it was with great dismay that they viewed the food problem—a meat card, a bread card, a tea card, a butter card, were all necessary for a fellow to get a meal, and what was worst of all, there was no sugar for our coffee and not being tea drinkers we were very much grieved to find out that we must use a chemical called saccharine to sweeten our coffee. However, we soon got used to it, but whenever possible we stayed on the ship for meals to make sure of things. It may be mentioned that at the time there was no American Y. M. C. A. in Liverpool. The English “Y” was as bad as the restaurants as far as eating was concerned. The English mode of travel was another puzzle to the American Bluejacket, there being three different class distinctions. It seemed queer to an Englishman that an American sailor should ride in a first class compartment on a train supposed to be only for the “higher class” people. It took our bluejackets quite some time and cost a few black eyes and bumped noses to convince some Englishmen that an American would not stand for any inferior rating.