During coffee, Fourgues summed up by saying that since no one cared a damn about cargo boats and tramps as long as the sailors kept quiet, perhaps it was time for the officers and captains of the Merchant Service to say what should be done and get together so as to discuss and decide on some line of action. They all agreed and drew up a programme, which they bound themselves to ask their colleagues to sign wherever they went, and also arranged to send a deputation to Paris as soon as possible. But you can understand, old man, how it is they haven’t much hope of its coming to anything. They will be told to go and get themselves sunk, and that no one asked for their advice, and what the deuce do the people who do the work mean by daring to give their opinion about it? As the country knows nothing about the Merchant Service and as it is being assured that all goes well at sea, the only satisfaction the captains will have will be to know they were right, and when they arrive in port they’ll be able to count how many of their chums have gone to Davy Jones’s locker. Amen and glory be to those who are torpedoed! If I had the time and knew how, I could tell you a lot of interesting things about Salonica that happened while we were there: Venizelos, the movement forward towards Monastir, the National Government, etc. You bet there’s plenty happening and lots of rumours. But I should need whole logs to tell about it, and then, outside my profession, I am afraid of putting my foot in it. Anyway, the Army of the East was glad to get our cargo from Marseilles--material for the railroad, tractors, tyres, gun-carriages, and petrol. When ships are late, operations are retarded by so much. If a ship is sunk, they have to wait for its substitute before they can go ahead. The stock must be collected again in France, sent to Marseilles, another boat found and loaded, which makes a month’s delay besides which something is always missing from the second shipment, some trifle that is enough to keep a vehicle or a gun or a railroad at a standstill. This kind of thing never happens at the front in France. There, they have only to telephone to the base in order to get what they want. Here, when you haven’t a thing, you haven’t got it and that’s all there is about it. But the French papers are howling that the Commander at Salonica is letting the grass grow under his feet! I’m only the mate on the _Pamir_, but I’d rather have my job than Sarrail’s.