Our officers over there volunteer for this service, and for every one who went, there were a dozen who wanted to go. And there is a lot of difference between men who go to a duty because they are ordered to go, and men who go because they want to go. These officers and men--there is no beating them, except by blowing them off the face of the waters. And even then they are not always beaten. One of our destroyers was cut down one night by collision. (With so many ships being crowded into a small steaming area, collisions are sure to happen.) All hands had to take to the rafts in a hurry. It was about two in the morning, one of those summer nights in the North when the light comes early. They watched her going under. Her deck settled level with the sea, and as it did so a young irrepressible one sang out: "What do you say, fellows, to having a race around the old girl before she flops under?" Away they started, four or five gangs of them, paddling their life rafts with their hands around the sinking ship at two in the morning. That is youth; and there is no beating youth. We have had stories of our soldiers singing a song that has become very popular since we entered the war. We have been told of them singing it under the most varying conditions: as they camped on the granite blocks of the Hoboken water-front; as they climbed over the gangways of ships bound across; debarking from ships in European ports; singing it from behind the drawn shades of coaches rolling across France. There were even those who sang it while waiting to step into the life-boats on a torpedoed troop-ship; but for light-hearted courage has any one beaten that destroyer lad who was torpedoed one night last winter? When the torpedo struck his ship the two depth charges astern were exploded also. Two 300-pound charges of T N T they were. The little ship seemed to be lifted out of the water. There was just time to throw over a few life rafts and take a high dive after the rafts. There was no time to get an S O S message away before the ship went down; so there they were--a November night in northern waters, more than half their crew known to be dead, their ship sunk, no other ship near and no hope of one coming near. It was about as tough a case as men could be expected to face and hope to live. But there was a boy there--he was jouncing up and down in the water to keep warm, and jouncing up and down he was singing (from out of the dark they heard him), singing cheerfully: "O boy, O boy, where do we go from here!" It is the thing spoken of in the early part of this book. Material is a great thing; but personnel has it beaten a dozen ways. Paul Jones with his capable seagoers in his little sloop-of-war could raise the devil with the enemy. Paul Jones with a line of battleships and forty crews of men without spirit would not have caused them ten minutes' loss of sleep. That singing lad in northern waters was worth a dozen guns.