On the China Station the naval officer’s concern with war was, perhaps, more exclusively technical than elsewhere. In home waters the Germans were as unfamiliar as bogey-men, and the English newspapers were near at hand. A speech or leading article was potent to awake, even in the naval mind, some of those vague misgivings concerning Wilhelmshaven upon which vulgar opinion on foreign affairs was at that time based. But the newspapers that reached China were stale and little read; and--most powerful antidote for political animosity--the German Fleet was a familiar sight, and its officers were frequent guests. The field of thought concerning war was thus circumscribed. When the time came, the China Squadron would fight its own independent battle in its own waters. The chess-board was set. The opposing force was known and visible. Many a time in Wardroom and Gunroom were the _Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, _Leipzig_, and _Nürnberg_ compared, knot for knot, gun for gun, armour for armour, torpedo-tube for torpedo-tube, with the _Pathshire_ and her comrade ships. No doubt the Germans made similar calculations; no doubt they, too, cast their eyes sometimes towards Japan. But, in a subtle manner, the very closeness of the association of those who were ultimately to be enemies robbed that association of bitterness. The Germans were excellent seamen, and pleasant companions at dinner. They danced well, drank well, laughed well, and could sing a good song. When Fate ended both dance and song the ensuing duel would be a gentlemanly trial of skill, intensely interesting, a settling of knotty arguments, a test, for instance, of what the Engineer-Commander could do with his main engines. The gun-fire silent at last, the survivors would be picked up and given whisky, or, if the weather was cold, sloe gin. The battle, important to civilians for its effects upon trade-routes, Eastern prestige, and a vast complexity of political issues, would be to those who took part in it a thrilling conclusion to a technical work which for many weary years had been hard reading. It would be a conclusion, an end of a book to which no sequel had been planned. After it, as after death, would be but that blank fly-leaf whose whiteness is more emphatic than the written word FINIS. A man whose whole life has been devoted to one object scarce dares to look beyond its attainment. The business man speaks uneasily of the years that are to follow his retirement; the historian wonders how he will occupy his time when his great work has gone to press; the mother turns from contemplation of the hour in which her child, made man by her pain and endeavour, goes from her into the world. And the naval officer looked infrequently and with reluctance beyond the crowning of his work.