Not all famous leaders are likeable, as every world traveller knows. They all have the magnetism of force, which is quite another thing from the magnetism of charm. What the public demands is that they shall win victories, whether personally likeable or not. But if they are likeable and simple and human in the bargain and a sailor besides--well, we know what that means. Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe is not a great man. It is not for a civilian even to presume to judge. We have the word of those who ought to know, however, that he is. I hope that he is, because I like to think that great commanders need not necessarily appear formidable. Nelson refused to be cast for the heavy part, and so did Farragut. It may be a sailor characteristic. I predict that after this war is over, whatever honours or titles they may bestow on him, the English are going to like Sir John Jellicoe not alone for his service to the nation, but for himself. Admiral Jellicoe is one with Captain Jellicoe, whose cheeriness even when wounded kept up the spirits of the others on the Relief Expedition of Boxer days. “He could do it, too!” one thought, having in mind Sir David Beatty’s leap to the deck of a destroyer. Spare, of medium height, ruddy, and fifty-seven. So much for the health qualification which the Admiralty lords dwelt upon as important. After he had been at sea for a year he seemed a human machine, much of the type of that destroyer as a steel machine--a thirty-knot human machine, capable of three hundred or five hundred revolutions, engines running smoothly, with no waste energy, slipping over the waves and cutting through them; a quick man, quick of movement, quick of comprehension and observation, of speech and of thought, with a delightful self-possession--for there are many kinds--which is instantly responsive with decision. A telescope under his arm, too, as he received his guests. One liked that. He keeps watch over the fleet himself when he is on the quarter-deck. One had a feeling that nothing could happen in all his range of vision, stretching down the “avenues of Dreadnoughts” to the light-cruiser squadron, and escape his attention. It hardly seems possible that he was ever bored. Everything around him interests him. Energy he has, electric energy in this electric age, this man chosen to command the greatest war product of modern energy. Fastened to the superstructure near the ladder to his quarters was a new broom which South Africa had sent him. He was highly pleased with that present; only the broom was von Tromp’s emblem, while Blake’s had been the whip. Possibly the South African Dutchmen, now fighting on England’s side, knew that he already had the whip and they wanted him to have the Dutch broom, too.