10 
LAND & WATER 
December 13, 1917 
Dubost. The ordinarj' sittings will be open to the public, 
out when it comes to the ^•otc, the High Court sits in 
-amcra. 
These arc the main points of the extraordinary, and at tlie 
same time very simple procedure which will in future apply 
to all cases of treason against the State when the accused 
occupies the iwsition of President or of Minister. One can 
only liope that the High Court, being composed of men of 
'education and standing, may not be swayed, as a popular 
jury might be, by political passion, and that implacable justice 
will be meted out to whoe%er is convicted of ha\ing betrayed, 
for whatever reason, the sacred trust which the nation has, in 
the greatest crisis of our history, placed in his hands. 
Such is the hope and desire of the \\holc French people. 
Merchantmen Engineers 
By William McFee 
THE mood is on me, and I begin to write. My heart 
is full and, what is more to the purpose, so is my 
fountain pen. I am seated in the lingineers' Mess, 
a nicf comfortable, well-upholstered, old-fashioned 
'oom about eighteen feet long by ten or twelve wide, with 
three port-holes open to the breeze of an electric fan sending 
a delicious artificial gale towards the ceiling where the electric 
light glows. On the enamelled white walls are instructions 
what to do when a submarine is sighted, when torpedoed, 
and so on. I am alone. The chief is in the Ward Koom, 
whitlier I shall also wend in a short time, to have a drink. 
1 have been nearly two months on a seaplane ship, and find 
the change agrees with me. 
It is Sunday, and I have been working. Oh, yes, there is 
plenty of work to do in the world, I find, wherever I go. 
i3ut I cannot help wondering why h'ate so often offers me the 
dirty end of the stick. Here I am, awaiting my commission 
as an engineer-officer of the R.N.R., and I am in the thick of 
it day after day. 1 don't mean, w hen I say " work," what 
\ou mean by worl;. I don't mean work such as my friend 
the Censor does, or my friend the X.E.O. does, or my friends 
and shipmates, the navigating officer, the flying men or the 
officers of the watch. I mean work, hard, sweating, nasty 
toil, coupled witli responsibility. I am not alone. Most 
ships of the naval auxiliaiy are the same. 
I am anxious' for you, a landsman, to grasp this particular 
fragment of the sorry scheme of things entire, that in .no 
other profession have the officers responsible for the carrying 
out of the work to toil as do the engineers in merchantmen, 
in transports, in fleet auxiliaries. You do not expect the 
major to clear the waste-pipe of his regimental latrines. You 
do not expect the surgeon to superintend the purging of his 
bandages. You do not expect the navigators of a ship to 
paint her hull. You do not expect an architect t.o make bricks 
[sometimes without straw). You do not expect the barrister 
io go and repair the lock on the law courts door, or oU the 
fans that ventilate the halls of justice. Yet you do, 
collectively, tolerate a tradition by which the marine engineer 
has to assist, overlook and very often perform work corre- 
sponding precisely to the irrelevant chores mentioned above, 
which are in other professions relegated to the humblest 
and roughest of mankind. I blame no one. It is tradition, 
a most terrible windmill at which to tilt ; but I conceive 
it my duty to set down once at least the peculiar nature of an 
engineer's destiny. I have had some years of it, and I know 
what I am talking about. 
The point to distinguish is that the engineer not only has 
the responsibdity, but he has, in nine cases out of ten, to do it. 
He, the officer, must befoul his person and derange his hours 
of rest and recreation, that others may enjoy. He must be 
available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, at sea 
or m port. Whether chief or the lowest junior, he must be 
ready to plunge mstantly to the succour of the vilest piece 
of mechanism on board. When coaling, his lot is easier 
imagmed than described. His department is the last to 
receive the benefits of modern science as regards tools and 
equipment. This is entirely due to the mania manufacturers 
have of insisting on the labour-saving virtues of their products, 
rhey always get an extra price by harping on the saving of 
labour obtained by using their patents. Which means that 
the unhappy engineer-officers of the ship are provided with 
another piece of auxiliary mechanism highly complicated 
highly efficient (when new) and highly provocative of pro- 
lanity when it begins to wear, and a" depleted engine-room 
-staff have to wrestle with its divagations. The ship-owner 
liappy in Ins purchase, reduces liis ideal staff still further or 
what amounts to the same thing, leaves it as it was ten yc'ars 
ago. He expects his engineer-officers to display loyalty 
< fficiency, sobnety. industry, tact, authority and ihanyothcr 
nameless virtues, the possession of whicli in any other voca- 
tion raise their possessor to dizzy altitudes; raise him. at any 
rate above the necessity of plunging into filth at all hours of 
the day and night. 
Yet what alternative can one suggest ? This is, as I have 
said, a tilt at a peculiarly massive windmill, having its founda- 
tions on the rock of tradition and cemented with conscientious- 
ness. The genuine blown-in-the-glass engineer must sec the 
thing done himself, must, in most cases, do it himself. If he 
does not, he is haunted by the nightmare of that particular 
thing falling down on him while on watch. There is this to 
be said and suggested — his tools could be modernised. 
Think for a moment that of all the ships at sea with electric 
current on tap, scarce one has an electric drill, a mechanism so 
common in America that everyone is familiar with it. Con- 
sider the dcnsencss of intellect which sends ships to sea every 
day without a single tool specially designed for its work, 
without an electric torch, or a blow-lamp, or a telephone 
between bridge and engine-room. 
I was privileged recently to inspect the stores and work- 
shop placed on a ship for the use of air-mechanics, and I was 
astounded. Here was richness ! Here were rows upon rows of 
neatly-made drawers and lockers, lathes, drills, grinders, 
saws, fans, motors— all the paraphernalia of a modern macliine 
shop. In the same vessel the photographic apparatus and 
dark room were a miracle of modernity. In the sick bay 
I found swing cots, fans, porcelain sinks.. X-ray apparatus, 
and every convenience of modern surgery. In the wireless 
room was a plant that out-marconied Marconi. And down 
below in the same vessel, the store was a dark and dismal 
chaos^ with a few filthy shelves stocked apparently by an 
intoxicated tinker. 
The topis for keeping the propelling mechanism in order 
were coeval with Watt and Fulton. With a djiiamo of 
Oo-kw. there was not a single electric fan or tool a\ailable. 
And the maddening thing about it all is that tradition makes 
the competent engineer look askance at modern machine tools. 
He must rnake good with the silly old things at his disposal. 
Here is his intellectual shame and his moral glory. For he 
does make good, in season and out of it, at sea and in port, 
fair weather and foul. The engines in his charge get there ; 
and he, invoh'ed in grease and sweat and nastiness, retires to 
Ins priinitivc bathroom to divest h.imself of them and restore 
his bodily presence to a semblance of civilised decency. 
Enough of this. As I look round the Ward Room "at dinner 
to-night, I find some other things to think of. There are some 
engineers, some airmen, some watch-oflicers ; I observe three 
D.S.O. ribbons. The gentlemen who wear these are neither 
engineers nor sailors. They are lieutenants R.N .A .S. When 
I and my shipmates were going through the mill, ploughing 
the ocean and qualifying for our certificates of competency 
these young men were at school. At a bound, after a training 
of months instead of years, they passed us. We were ready. 
VV e were needed. We did not cost the country a single penny 
to fit us for the vital office of taking a ship to sea and keeping 
her there. We are sub-lieutenants or less than that. Here 
I am charging at another windmill ! 
At the same time, I must admit that a change is coming 
oyer the scene. Distinctions are reaching the engine-rooms 
ot battleships and gunboats {vide the dispatch on the Tigris 
operations) so in due course the men who officer the auxiliary 
vessels of the Fleet and Transport services will some day come 
into their own. "^ 
There is no personal note in this. By virtue ot the creative 
laculty I discover in myself but little liking for the outward 
trappings of heroism. There is, as a matter of fact, no scrap 
of the hero in me. I take other ground. An insatiable interest 
in humanity, crmging, foohsh, scared humanity, diverts me 
irom any rational interest in heroes and demi-gods. I find 
uniform an irksome restraint. I want to meander down 
Arab streets and talk to private soldiers in their tents and 
l^vl? T . ""a- ,^ '.™"^ ^" ^"^ ^ '^°*' °^ ^'""g^ no gentleman 
^ZthrZ -^f l^^^h ^""^^ "^^' t" the delicate%uestion, 
x\hether the older tradition of being " an officer and a gentle- 
!n!!" r. ."'"!""'''■'; -'^^P**-^^ ^° this war. I don't say for a 
moment that modern officers are not gentlemen. Only they 
aren t any more gentlemen for being officers. 
1 ceS ront'^'^'u''""'' ^- ^oni'^times surreptitiously visit 
M A olfnrH 7,"^ contains a couple of sergeants, both 
n rWV P. also meet ostentatiously an officer who was 
L.^f Vi, "'"""y- ^ P'"^^*^'' ^'isiting, if not dwelling in, what 
one of the sergeants calls the " tents of wickednes^s." And 
1 m ver>' much afraid I shall lower myself in the eyes of the 
uniformed world by going there too often. Here at leas s a 
windmill I can tilt at with some chance of success ! 
