The arrangements made for the comfort of the men were excellent. A church, a chapel, recreation rooms, a theatre, a cinema house, and canteens fronted the quay, and good companies were brought from London theatres and music-halls to entertain the sailors, while, of course, provision was also made for outdoor sports and games. There were, naturally, serious-minded people who considered that some of these arrangements were of a frivolous character, out of harmony with the tragedy of war. But those who organised these things knew better. The strain of submarine work is very great. To occupy the minds of the men with amusements while they are resting awhile on shore after their trying duties cannot but help to keep up their _moral_. And that the _moral_ of the submarine men was wonderful all are agreed. Surely no other Service on land or sea can supply a greater test of sustained valour than does this submarine warfare. The conditions of it are uncanny, calculated to terrify the imagination. As a rule the submarine is playing a lone hand upon the seas. It is rare, when disaster comes, for a friendly ship to be near her to bring help or to carry tidings of her to England. In the great majority of cases, when one of our submarines has been lost, all that is known of the disaster is that she does not come home. What has happened to her remains a secret of the sea never to be revealed. An ordinary patrol for a submarine of the Harwich Flotilla was of about ten days; a mine-laying trip, of from three to six days' duration. When the overdue ship did not return there was suspense for several days, until at last it was realised that there was no longer room for hope. In this little flotilla of eighteen submarines, ships that disappeared had to be replaced by others. For in the course of the war twenty "E" boats, two "D" boats, and one "L" boat belonging to the flotilla were lost, and these figures do not include the submarines that were detached from the Harwich Flotilla to be lost in the Mediterranean and Baltic. The sailor of to-day has not all the superstitions of his forefathers, but, like most people, he has some belief in omens. Certain coincidences made him regard it as very unlucky to sail in a submarine when a new captain was making his first voyage in her. Within a short period four submarines that had sailed out of Harwich under new captains were never heard of again. It was also recognised that ill luck was likely to attend the first voyage of a newly launched submarine; but that, so soon as the first voyage had been safely accomplished, all was well with the ship, which would then be faced only by the ordinary chances of war.