In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to relieve the legations against some hundreds of thousands of Boxers, Captain Bowman McCalla and his Americans worked with Admiral Seymour and his Britons in the most trying and picturesque adventure of its kind in modern history. McCalla, too, was always talking of Jellicoe, who was wounded on the expedition; and Sir John's face lighted at mention of McCalla's name. He recalled how McCalla had painted on the superstructure of the little Newark that saying of Farragut's, "The best protection against an enemy's fire is a well-directed fire of your own"; which has been said in other ways and cannot be said too often. "We called McCalla Mr. Lead," said Sir John; "he had been wounded so many times and yet was able to hobble along and keep on fighting. We corresponded regularly until his death." Beatty, too, was on that expedition; and he, too, was another personality one kept hearing about. It seemed odd that two men who had played a part in work which was a soldier's far from home should have become so conspicuous in the Great War. If on that day when, with ammunition exhausted, all members of the expedition had given up hope of ever returning alive, they had not accidentally come upon the Shi-kou arsenal, one would not be commanding the Grand Fleet and the other its battle-cruiser squadron. Before the war, I am told, when Admiralty Lords and others who had the decision to make were discussing who should command in case of war, opinion ran something like this: "Jellicoe! He has the brains." "Jellicoe! He has the health to endure the strain, with years enough and not too many." "Jellicoe! He has the confidence of the service." The choice literally made itself. When anyone is undertaking the gravest responsibility which has been an Englishman's for a hundred years, this kind of a recommendation helps. He had the guns; he had supreme command; he must deliver victory--such was England's message to him. When I mentioned in a dispatch that all that differentiated him from the officers around him was the broader band of gold lace on his arm, an English naval critic wanted to know if I expected to find him in cloth of gold. No; nor in full dress with all his medals on, as I saw him appear on the screen at a theatre in London. Any general of high command must be surrounded by more pomp than an admiral in time of action. A headquarters cannot have the simplicity of the quarter-deck. The force which the general commands is not in sight; the admiral's is. You saw the commander and you saw what it was that he commanded. Within the sweep of vision from the quarter-deck was the terrific power which the man with the broad gold band on his arm directed. At a signal from him it would move or it would stand still. That command of Joshua's if given by Sir John one thought might have been obeyed.