During the whole recital of his achievements the nearest thing to self-glorification that I was able to detect in his manner was a momentary flashing of the eye, which no one would deny even to Admiral Beatty himself. He was disinclined to discuss the war, and I remember that at the time I thought how correct this attitude was in an officer, and how different from many of his fellows of the land service, who will discuss nothing else. He told me that he had spent a considerable time in England, and that he liked the English. The promptness with which he denied that it was his boat that had sunk the _Lusitania_ left me in no doubt as to his view of that colossal outrage. In fact, I have heard from many sources that the German Navy regards this discreditable exploit as a blot upon its name. I talked to him many times at the Pera Club, where there were comparatively few Germans and plenty of food, the one fact probably explaining the other. If all Germans were of the same type as the German naval officers and men, the word “Hun” would probably never have been applied; it certainly would not so aptly fit. In their franker moments these naval officers and men confess that they hate the horrible work they are obliged to do; but that they have no alternative but to carry out the orders received from Berlin. There are brutes among them, no doubt, but such German naval officers as I have met compare very favourably with their swaggering colleagues of the land service. German sailors are under no misapprehension as to the might and efficiency of the British Navy. It is not they who spread the tale of the British Fleet hiding in ports while German ships proudly sail the North Sea. It is not they who ask plaintively, “Will the British Fleet never come out?” They are practical men, and for the most part honest men, and they know that Germany has it in her own hands to bring out the British Fleet in no uncertain manner. The Germans are annoyed because the valuable ships of the British Navy do not parade up and down in the neighbourhood of Heligoland and Wilhelmshaven and allow themselves to be torpedoed by German submarines. The German idea of naval warfare is sometimes childish, but it belongs to the layman and not to the expert. “Our people started the war ten years too soon,” was the remark that one German officer made to me.