The meal (they explained that they had picked up the habit of “seven-bell tea” from us, and the lesson had not been ill-learned) was nearing its close when a sudden shout of laughter obliterated the hum of chaff and conversation. Every eye turned on a midshipman at the end of the table, whose face was slowly turning carmine to the roots of his curly hair. The President extended his closed fist, thumb pointing downwards. One after another the remainder followed suit until every member sat thus with the exception of the blushing victim. He looked the length of the long table twice, gathered his cup and plate together, and without further ado vanished beneath the table to the accompaniment of unbridled mirth. If nothing else had been needed to emphasise the fact, I realised in that moment that I was in a gunroom of the Eternal Navy. There was no question of “showing off” before a stranger--indeed they had forgotten my existence; it was not even ragging. It was just that I had accidentally witnessed the workings of some great Law, immutable and inexplicable as Fate, in full swing about my uncomprehending head. The meal progressed as if nothing had occurred to break its serenity. I pleaded for light. “It’s just our mail, you see,” explained the President. “Something has happened to our mails. All the rest of the ships get theirs regularly and ours hasn’t fetched up once since we’ve been here.” “It’s the fault of the ship’s name,” chipped in another (the ship bore the name of a great American State); “d’rectly the bags reach Liverpool, someone looks at the labels an’ says, ‘Here, ain’t that somewhere in America?’ an’ back they go. They’ve been goin’ backwards an’ forwards for months.” “With Fritz takin’ pot-shots at them as they come and go,” added a voice. Muffled requests for reinforcements of buttered toast drifted up from underneath the table. “Well?” I queried, still hopelessly in the dark. “Oh, well, you see, anyone who mentions the word ‘mail’ at meals just has to quit an’ go underneath the table; we’ve made it a rule.” A British midshipman who draws a dirk in the gunroom stands a round of port after dinner. To each navy its own etiquette--and penalties. It was when we had lit our pipes (the exile had been suffered to return to our midst) and sprawled in comfort, elbows on table, that the real inner meaning of this great Alliance dawned fully upon me. Together we refought Jutland as it has been refought in scores and scores of gunrooms amid tobacco smoke and the shifting of spoons and matches across a tablecloth; after that, it was baseball instead of rugger; Annapolis instead of Dartmouth training college; but it all amounted to a common ideal, voiced, not by politicians or diplomats, but by a nation’s youth in common speech with ours.