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The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend by Mrs. Humphry Ward
page 33 of 163 (20%)
had gone farther afield than they.

I walked back to my motor, disappointed indeed, and yet exulting.
It was good to realise personally through this small incident,
the mobility and ever-readiness of the Fleet--the absolute
insignificance--non-existence even--of any civilian or shore interest, for
the Navy at its work. It was not till a week later that I received an
amusing and mysterious line from Commodore ----, the most courteous of
men.

[Illustration: Marines Drilling on the Quarterdeck of a British
Battleship.]

[Illustration: Fifteen-inch Guns on a British Battleship.]


IV

By the time it reached me, however, I was on the shores of a harbour in
the far north "visiting the Fleet," indeed, and on the invitation of
England's most famous sailor. Let me be quite modest about it. Not for me
the rough waters, or the thunderous gun-practice--

"Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides"--

which I see described in the letters of the Russian or American
journalists who have been allowed to visit the Grand Fleet. There had
been some talk, I understand, of sending me out in a destroyer; it was
mercifully abandoned. All the same, I must firmly put on record that mine
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