joint committee of the War however, suffered under the Staff and the General Staff disability of an entire lack of without the presence of Cabi- familiarity with the class of net Ministers, our naval forces work that he was suddenly would never have been com- called upon to perform. The mitted to the creeping form section was, moreover, under of operations against the the general control of an official Straits in the absence of mili- who knew nothing about these tary support, the campaign matters at all-myself. (if undertaken at all) would not have commenced until an army was available and the weather had become settled, and it is likely enough that the whole project would have been incontinently dropped in deference to professional opinion. Very few officers in the regular army are conversant with international law. Nor used they, in the days before 1914, to interest themselves in the status of aliens when the country is engaged in hostilities, nor with problems of censorship, nor with the relations between the military and the Press, nor with the organisation, the maintenance, and the duties of a secret service. Before mobilisation, these matters were looked after by a section of the General Staff under an officer of wide experience, who had made them a special study and who had devised the machinery for performing duties, which on the outbreak of war suddenly assumed a cardinal importance and called for administration at the hands of a large personnel. But on mobilisation the officer took up an important appointment with the Expeditionary Force, and disappeared, charge of his section being taken by an extremely capable and energetic substitute, who, Three or four days after the declaration of war a brace of very distinguished civil servants, one representing the Foreign Office and the other the Home Office, came across Whitehall by appointment and with long faces, and the four of us sat solemnly round a table they, the above-mentioned officer and I. It appeared that we had been guilty of terrifying violations of international law. We had seized numbers of German reservists and German males of military age on board ships in British ports, and had consigned some of them to quarters designed for the accommodation of malefactors. This sort of thing would never do. Suoh steps had not been taken by belligerents in 1870, nor at the time of the American War of Secession, and I am not sure that Messrs Mason and Slidell were not trotted out. The Foreign and Home Secretaries would not unlikely be agitated when they heard of the shocking affair. Soldiers, no doubt, were by nature abrupt and unconventional in their actions, and the Foreign and Home Offices would make every allowance, realising that we had acted in good faith. Still! And they regarded us with compassionate displeasure. Will it be believed! My assistant and I knew so little about our couple of officials fossilised by business that we did not then dwelling in a groove for years, and there fall upon that pre- to accept it as a principle oious pair and rend them. We that this tremendous conflict took their protestations and into which the Empire had themselves quite seriously. We plunged at a moment's notice accepted their courteous, but was to be a kid-glove transuncompromising, rebuke like action. Immersed in the small boys caught stealing slough of peace conditions, apples whose better feelings age could wither nor have been appealed to. For custom stale the infinite the space of two or three incapacity of some public hours, and until we had re- servants in this non - milioovered our wits, we remained tary country of ours for concontent, on the strength of ceiving any other state of doctrines enunciated by a things. not VOL. CCV.-NO. MCCXXXIX. A MINE-FIELD. "WIRELESS message, sir." A crumpled and rather wet piece of paper was handed through the wheel-house door. "Right, thank you," said Jones, the officer to whom this remark had been addressed, taking the message in his hand and glancing at it. "I'll send down if there is any answer." He stood at the wheel-house window for a moment watching the wireless operator dodging the showers of spray which were breaking over the ship as he ran back to the wireless room, and then raising his glasses to his eyes he carefully examined the horizon ahead of him. It was as peaceful a scene as one could well imagine anywhere in the world during the year 1916. A moderate wind was blowing, just sufficient to turn the tops of the waves into streaks of white foam, which shone and glistened in the bright sunshine. The land was plainly visible about five miles away, rising in steep cliffs of red granite straight out of the sea, and the numerous bays and headlands could be clearly distinguished. In some of the olefts in the cliffs masses of dirty snow which had defied the warmth of the summer sun could still be seen, and as far as the eye could see the land was a striking picture of peace and desolation. A few gulls were flying about, and occasionally a school of hair seals would show them selves on the surface and gaze inquisitively at the ship and then dive with a noisy splash, to reappear a moment later at a safer distance. Otherwise the sea appeared as deserted as the land. In fact there was nothing whatever to be seen except the six British trawlers who were employed at the time of my narrative in the monotonous though at times dangerous pastime of mine-sweeping, and at occasional intervals a moored buoy which marked the ship channel. These buoys were necessary to enable the trawlers to to maintain their correct positions while sweeping, and to ensure that the shipping which used the channel should pass over the area which they had swept. Having satisfied himself that everything was normal and that the rest of the trawlers were in their correct positions, Jones turned to address the skipper, who was standing near him. "Keep an eye on them while I am below, Stephens, and let me know at once if anything is wanted. If the Sandfly gets any farther astern hoist the signal to increase speed again. I am going down to decode this message.' "Very good, sir," said Stephens, the skipper, a brawny Yorkshireman, who was standing with his head through one of the wheel-house windows, his legs well apart, and with a large bowl of black-looking tea in his hand; "but as I've often said, you can't rightly expect a class of vessel like that Sandfly there to keep up with the likes of us; she ain't built same as these Hull boats." "No, perhaps not," said Jones, "but I've never noticed her very far astern when we are on our way into harbour; she can do better than she is doing now if she likes." "Those Scotch-built boats are all very well for the purpose for which they are constructed," continued the skipper, warming up to his favour ite discussion, "and if you notice..." "That's all right, skipper," interrupted Jones, who by this time was half-way down the ladder leading from the wheelhouse to his small cabin immediately below, where he extracted the code from the box in which it was kept. Stephens, his skipper, was an incorrigible believer in every thing, either men or ships, which came from his native town of Hull. Fortunately for his own peace of mind, he was skipper of as fine an example of a pre-war Iceland trawler as had ever been turned out from that port, and he was extravagantly proud of her. No one knew better than Jones himself what a fine sea boat the Sir Thomas Dancer was, and how well built and fitted; but though she had these and many other attributes, she was not at all a fast ship; in fact, in smooth water she was one of the slowest of the group. However, nothing would ever convince Stephens that she was not a regular ocean greyhound, and Jones had long ago given up arguing the matter. He sat down with the signal in front of him and commenced to decode it. "I hope it's a trifle more interesting than the last dozen I've had," he said to himself; "but it's probably some more rubbish about airoraft codes or something as equally useless in this benighted part of the world, where an aeroplane or a zeppelin is even rarer than a glass of beer or a mail." The message in this case, however, turned out to be quite interesting. It was from the oruiser stationed in the harbour on which the trawlers were based, and read as follows: "Master of s.s. Baron reports that he passed olose to a floating mine at 6 A.M. to-day about half a mile north-east of No. 15 buoy. Report appears to be reliable." Jones replaced the code in its box and climbed up into the wheel-house again. "Well, skipper, how is the Sandfly getting on now?" "She is catching us up a bit, sir," said the said the skipper, rather reluctantly, "so I've whistled down to tell Arthur to give her all he can." Arthur was the chief engineer, also a Hull man, and the two men saw eye to eye on all matters which concerned the reputation of their ship or their native port. 'Going fast enough for us after all, is she?" said Jones with a smile. "Anyhow, here's another of these floating mines reported, so we shall have to slip our sweeps and go down to have a look for it. Signalman, hoist the signal to wheel four points to starboard, and have the signal to slip ready." The flags for the wheel were duly hoisted, and Jones stood watching the other five trawlers' masts for the signal to be repeated. "All repeated except the John Brown, sir," said the signalman down the voice - pipe. After waiting three or four minutes the signal was slowly repeated in the John Brown; the order to haul down the signal was then given, and the six trawlers turned in good formation to starboard and steered out away from the channel which they had been sweeping. This necessary precaution was always carried out before slipping the sweeps, as it is quite possible for a pair of trawlers to have a mine in their sweep for some time without knowing it, and should they slip while still in the channel the mine might remain undetected in the path of shipping. When about a mile clear of the channel the signal to slip was hoisted and duly repeated by all five without loss of time, and for the next ten minutes steam was to be seen pouring out of the funnels of the trawlers as they lay in the trough of the sea heaving in their wire hawsers with their huge steam winches. When the last one had finished, Jones gave the order to hoist the signal to form single line abreast to starboard, ships one mile apart, course to Once be steered south-east. again the John Brown was the last ship to repeat the signal. "Haul down," said Jones, "and now hoist to John Brown, 'Pay more attention to signals." The John Brown's answering pendant was kept at half-mast for some time, before being hoisted close up to indicate that the signal was understood. "Must think we've made a mistake in our signal, and that it can't be meant for him,” growled Stephens, who had been gazing at the trawler for some minutes through his glasses. The signal to look out for floating mines was then hoisted, and this was slowly repeated down the fast extending line of ships, who by this time were opening out on to the five-mile front they had been ordered to take up. A careful observer would have noticed a man climbing up on to the forecastle head of each trawler, from which position he was able to locate any object floating in the water close under the bows. This formation was maintained for the next few hours, but nothing was seen. The line of trawlers covered and extended about two miles each side of the ship channel, and made it quite certain that any mine floating in or near the channel would be seen. It was now about 5 P.M., and there were only about four hours more daylight. more daylight. Jones ordered the signal to be hoisted to turn together sixteen points, and as the signal was hauled down each trawler turned completely |