The wherefore of this they explained to me severally presently, when it turned out that their views--as regards their duties as Americans--were precisely similar. Like all good Yankees, they said, they had it in for both the Hun and the Sinn Feiner; but, because each of them had a _name_ to live down, he felt it incumbent on himself to out-strafe his mates in the direction from which that name came. It was a bit naïve, that confession, but at the same time highly instructive; and I wouldn't care to be the Hun or Sinn Feiner that either of those ex-hyphenates had a fair chance at. A very domestic little party I found cuddled up aft among the depth-charges. One lad--he had been a freshman at Cornell, I learned later, and would not wait to train for a commission, so keen had he been to get into the war--was just back from a week's leave in London, and was telling about it with much circumstance. There were many things that had interested and amused him, but the great experience had been three days spent as a guest in an English home at Wimbledon. The head of the family, it appeared, was some kind of a City man, and, encountering the doubtless aimlessly wandering Yank at Waterloo, had forthwith carried him home. Everything had bristled with interest for the young visitor, from the marmalade at breakfast and the port at dinner to croquet on the lawn and a punt on the Thames at Richmond. But the best of it all had been that he had brought a standing invitation from the same family to any of his mates who might be coming up to London while the war was on. During the refit, which was supposed to be imminent, two of these, who had plumped for the great London adventure, had screwed up their courage to following up the invitation to the hospitable home in question. Out of his broader experience, their worldly mate was tipping them off against possible breakers. This is the only one I remember: "You'll find," he said, gesturing with an admonitory finger that could just be dimly guessed against the phosphorescence of the tossing wake, "that they don't seem to have any great grudge 'gainst us for licking them and going on our own in '76; but go easy on rubbing it in just the same, 'cause you're a guest in the house. Best forget the Revolution while you're over here. That scrap was more'n a hundred years ago, and we've got another on now. Half the people you meet here never heard of it, anyhow, and when you mention it to them they think you refer to another Revolution in France which came off about the same time."