Three English cruisers--the _Cressy_, the _Hogue_ and the _Aboukir_--have just found their last resting-place in the North Sea. Still intact, but bearing in their sides torpedo-wounds, they have slipped into their winding-sheet of sea-weed, where the skeletons of vessels sunk in ancient wars await them. The sea-water, that patient embalmer, will reclothe their keels with a shroud of rust and lime. On bright days, when the sun shines on the still sea, they will see the shadows of living vessels pass overhead. They will be caressed by the ripple from those screws, and their petrified hulks will quiver with pleasure. During the tedious hours of the lookout, I have been meditating upon the wireless messages which announced the death of the _Cressy_, the _Hogue_, and the _Aboukir_. That same tragedy may cut short the very phrases which I am commencing to unite. I imagine the whole scene, I recreate it. I have sailed the North Sea, I have lived two years in a submarine, and I am at war now on a cruiser. I see three ships, somber and silent like ourselves, following the course laid down by the Admiral. North and south, other patrol vessels are traversing the appointed routes. While the soldiers of France and the children of England sleep, the sailors are keeping watch on the sea, that no one may force the barriers of their countries. But the sea is illimitable, the cruisers are few and far between, and cannot lend each other aid. For this the sailor must make up in toil and weariness; he takes less sleep, he watches unceasingly, he is always cold, he never touches land. Up there, just as in the Adriatic, he mounts his guard, longing with all his heart for an adventure. Thus sailed the _Cressy_, the _Hogue_, and the _Aboukir_, how many days I do not know. But I do know the vigilance, the labor, the self-sacrifice of their crews. More than all the others, they offered their souls to the service of victory--these sailors whose ships are decorated with the famous names of English victories. These three noble names, did they not foretell a new harvest of laurels? Did they not symbolize a return to more fraternal policies, which dedicated to the service of France these namesakes of French defeats? English officers and sailors, with the clear instinct of men participating in great deeds, should offer France, in a single victory over our common enemies, a recompense for these three disasters England had inflicted upon her!