Though the man who had sent that message was apparently facing death at the time when it was written, Admiral Bayly told me that he had survived the ordeal, and that, in fact, he would dine at Admiralty House that very night. Another fact about this man lifted him above the commonplace: he was the first Q-boat commander to receive the Victoria Cross, and one of the very few who wore both the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service Order; and he subsequently won bars for each, not to mention the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour. When Captain Gordon Campbell arrived, I found that he was a Britisher of quite the accepted type. His appearance suggested nothing extraordinary. He was a short, rather thick-set, phlegmatic Englishman, somewhat non-committal in his bearing; until he knew a man well, his conversation consisted of a few monosyllables, and even on closer acquaintance his stolidity and reticence, especially in the matter of his own exploits, did not entirely disappear. Yet there was something about the Captain which suggested the traits that had already made it possible for him to sink three submarines, and which afterward added other trophies to his record. It needed no elaborate story of his performances to inform me that Captain Campbell was about as cool and determined a man as was to be found in the British navy. His associates declared that his physical system absolutely lacked nerves; that, when it came to pursuing a German submarine, his patience and his persistence knew no bounds; and that the extent to which his mind concentrated upon the task in hand amounted to little less than genius. When the war began, Captain Campbell, then about thirty years old, was merely one of several thousand junior officers in the British navy. He had not distinguished himself in any way above his associates; and probably none of his superiors had ever regarded him as in any sense an unusual man. Had the naval war taken the course of most naval wars, Campbell would probably have served well, but perhaps not brilliantly. This conflict, however, demanded a new type of warfare and at the same time it demanded a new type of naval fighter. To go hunting for the submarine required not only courage of a high order, but analytical intelligence, patience, and a talent for preparation and detail. Captain Campbell seemed to have been created for this particular task. That evening at Queenstown he finally gave way to much urging, and entertained us for hours with his adventures; he told the stories of his battles with submarines so quietly, so simply and, indeed, so impersonally, that at first they impressed his hearers as not particularly unusual. Yet, after the recital was finished, we realized that the mystery ship performances represented some of the most admirable achievements in the whole history of naval warfare. We have laid great emphasis upon the brutalizing aspects of the European War; it