junior officers of the Trade, that these may see what things are done
and how. The juniors read but laugh. They have heard the stories, with
all the flaming detail and much of the language, either from a chief
actor while they perched deferentially on the edge of a mess-room
fender, or from his subordinate, in which case they were not so
deferential, or from some returned member of the crew present on the
occasion, who, between half-shut teeth at the wheel, jerks out what
really happened. There is very little going on in the Trade that the
Trade does not know within a reasonable time. But the outside world
must wait until my Lords of the Admiralty release the records. Some of
them have been released now.


SUBMARINE AND ICE-BREAKER

Let us take, almost at random, an episode in the life of H.M.
Submarine E9. It is true that she was commanded by Commander Max
Horton, but the utter impersonality of the tale makes it as though the
boat herself spoke. (Also, never having met or seen any of the
gentlemen concerned in the matter, the writer can be impersonal too.)
Some time ago, E9 was in the Baltic, in the deeps of winter, where
she used to be taken to her hunting grounds by an ice-breaker.
Obviously a submarine cannot use her sensitive nose to smash heavy ice
with, so the broad-beamed pushing chaperone comes along to see her
clear of the thick harbour and shore ice. In the open sea apparently
she is left to her own devices. In company of the ice-breaker, then,
E9 "proceeded" (neither in the Senior nor the Junior Service does any
one officially "go" anywhere) to a "certain position."

Here--it is not stated in the book, but the Trade knows every aching,