drew to the flank, the battle fleet was deployed in line of battle, and very ready to do its work.

I think that this moment must have been one of the greatest anti-climaxes of history. The Germans, up till that minute, must have felt jubilant. I do not honestly think that they expected the arrival of the battle fleet for several hours. Put yourself in the place of the Germans, and, assuming that, what was the prospect? The odds were in their favor by a matter of four to one; the result could not be in doubt. It must only be a matter of time until the British were sunk. Half an hour should see them crippled, in an hour they would have ceased to exist. Then all that remained was to avoid contact with the main British fleet and return to base, having struck a blow which would shake Britain's prestige more than ever before. The appearance of the cruisers caused a sudden flutter. Could this mean reinforcements? No; such ships would not be sent into action ahead of the fleet. This must be a vain attempt to save one or two of the heavy ships at the expense of a cruiser. Never mind, this action would merely serve to increase the bag! They must have rubbed their hands.

Then the smoke cleared away, and revealed the British fleet - miles of it. The spectacle of seven or more miles of ships, at fairly close range, and all fresh to the fight, must have stricken terror into the heart of many a superman. Within the space of a few minutes the tables had been absolutely turned. Now it was to become a fight for life on the part of the late pursuers.

As soon as the smoke cleared our fleet opened fire. At such short range very little time was lost in 'finding the target.' Hits were scored almost from the start. The effect on the Hun was most marked. He seemed completely unable to cope with the situation.

From accurate and steady fire he changed to wild and irregular shooting within a few minutes. With the strain relaxed, we watched with interest the splashes of shells falling a mile or more from their intended target. So ineffectual was their fire that they only scored one small hit on the battle fleet. Within ten minutes three ships near the head of their line of battleships were burning brightly. In other ships hits could also be seen in the form of fires.

Our squadron was temporarily out of the fight, for, in taking up our position in the line, we were forced to alter course out of range. Thus, when we once more took up the tale, it was against a much-battered foe, and the fire which we gave merely added to his confusion.

Thus the Hun realized that, after all, Der Tag had not yet come. In fact, at this juncture, the Kiel Canal was distinctly preferable to the mastery of the seas. Whether they won or not, the laurel wreaths were prepared, and the Kaiser's speech was written. It seemed a pity if nobody reaped the benefit. At any rate it was obvious that anything was preferable to the present state of affairs. Accordingly, the main fleet was turned away, and the destroyers were sent to cover the turn by a torpedo attack.

Of that torpedo attack little need be said. We saw eight large destroyers approaching us. The order was passed to our secondary armament, and they opened fire. As far as we could see, not a torpedo was fired; at least not one torpedo passed near us. Three of those eight destroyers were crippled by us and finished off by our light cruisers and destroyers. The remainder were last seen steaming away at full speed.

However, we were unable to follow the enemy with any prospect of success. Dark was coming down, and

the mist was too thick for any more effective action. Thus the Commander-in-Chief manoeuvred us so that we were placed between the Hun and his base, and so that the next morning we might resume the argument. Then dark came down.

As soon as the actual fighting was finished, the captain and navigator left the conning tower for the bridge, where a clearer view could be obtained. The staff, of course, followed. We then began to relax after a strenuous day, and felt extremely cold. We had had no food since lunch, and I had no warm clothing with me. However, there was no possibility of leaving the bridge, so there was nothing to be done but wait. Our only food that night was a few sandwiches, produced from heaven knows where.

The night was almost more exciting than the day. With the continuance of the mist it was very dark. As a result, it was impossible to tell when we might run into the enemy fleet. We might pass within half a mile of each other without knowing it. Also, the enemy might try a destroyer attack, if they could locate us. Destroyer attacks on a dark night are the most fiendish things possible. In addition, the destroyers have the advantage over big ships, as, while invisible themselves, they can see the black shapes of the big ships looming up in the dark.

Our small craft were the easy winners of the night operations. They clung to the enemy fleet throughout the early part of the night, harassing them with attacks whenever possible. As well as this, chance meetings were very frequent. An odd destroyer, or possibly two or three, would suddenly find themselves in the middle of a German squadron. In every case there was no second thought about the matter. They went straight in, enduring any fire, in order to fire their tor

pedoes. To be a Hun must have been a nerve-racking thing.

These affairs were half-hourly throughout the first half of the night, and, when viewed from our standpoint, were a weird and wonderful sight. All of a sudden the darkness would be interrupted by a glare of light, as a searchlight was switched on. The light might be five or ten miles away, but its glare lighted the whole area dimly. Then would come the rattle and booming of guns fired at great speed, with red flashes stabbing the darkness. For about five minutes this would continue. Frequently there would be an explosion as some ship met her doom. The sky would become lighted with the flickering of fires started aboard some of the engaged ships. Suddenly, as though by a prearranged signal, the firing would cease, the searchlights go out, and peace and darkness reign once more. The worst of these affairs which we noted occurred shortly after midnight, when the termination came in a large explosion which lighted up the sky brightly for miles. Some big ship must have left this world at that time.

By midnight we were becoming very tired. I found another midshipman who had managed an hour's sleep at his station, who relieved me of my duties on the bridge. I was told that I might go to the conning tower for a short while, and after borrowing some warm clothes I went there to look for a corner to sleep in. There was not an inch of the deck available; the crew off watch were occupying the whole space. All that I could find was a voice-pipe, which made a horizontal bend, and on this I sat down. Within ten seconds I was asleep.

This period off' was no lengthy one, for after half an hour I was sent for to return to the bridge, as my relief was required again. However, after an

hour, I had another spell off for an hour; and later, when once more relieved, I squeezed into a corner and slept soundly for one and a half hours, propped up against the steel wall of the conning tower. Thus I was very lucky. The captain and navigator never left the bridge for one second during the whole of the night.

At dawn we were all much on the qui vive. It was thought quite probable that we should find ourselves in the middle of the enemy fleet. As it was, we merely found ourselves in a thick haze, with a maximum visibility of less than one mile. Under these conditions it was impossible to keep touch with him. It was a terrible disappointment to us all. A meeting then would have meant a decisive victory. In clear weather he would probably have been in sight.

We continued to stand to the southward until the mined area was reached, when we turned back and swept to the northward in the hopes of catching some if not all of them. However, our luck was out.

About 7 A.M., when danger of an immediate action was lessened, our thoughts returned to the aching void which took the place of our stomachs. Heroic cooks left their stations and lighted the galley fire. In sections, the ship's company went to breakfast.

I was not in the first batch, and was much interested to hear reports as to how we had fared aft. The first account was from a lieutenant. 'Oh,' he said, 'the chief damage is in the gunroom. A proj. has completely wrecked the place, and it is three inches deep in beer.' The whole story was somewhat exaggerated. The mess was an absolute

Blackwood's Magazine

wreck through the effects of our own gunfire, and not one piece of crockery remained. We messed in the wardroom for some days.

About 8 A.M. I had my first meal for twenty hours. Everyone present was busily talking and relating his experiences. This in the intervals of ravenous feeding. From the others I gathered that the enemy had not harmed us. Our sole casualty was a gentleman who dropped a shell on his toe while attempting to load. Of course, there were numerous close shaves. There was the midshipman in the foretop who lost his cap, and subsequently found it, with a piece of iron inside, on the upper deck. I am afraid that suspicion with regard to the 'shrapnel bullet' rests on a kindly old chief stoker who was in charge of a fire party.

At about noon, after much fruitless sweeping, we heard that the enemy had slipped past us in the mist and had regained his harbor. Much sickened, we were forced to return. The next day we got in and started to replenish. For the remainder of that day and for the whole of the following night we were replenishing with ammunition and fuel. By the morning after we were ready for sea once more.

The whole fight was one long series of disappointments, and possibly the greatest disappointment of all was the reception on our return, as a result of gloomy communiqués. That matter has long since been set right, and now every person knows that the Jutland action was, though action was, though indecisive, as judged by tangible results, an expression of the sea power of the Allies, and their ability to drive back intruders.

STOPFORD BROOKE, in an article in the Hibbert Journal, on Shelley's Interpretation of Christ, says, 'there is no more magnificent embodiment of the noblest doctrine of Jesus, even to the redemption of the world by faithful suffering in the cause of truth and love, than the Prometheus Unbound.'

Mr. Wilfrid Ward, in his recently published Lowell Lectures, says of Newman that in his hymn 'Lead, Kindly Light' he 'spoke more truth than he could speak in any philosophic tone.' These are noteworthy tributes to poetry as preeminently the vehicle of religious thought and feeling, coming as they do from men of such opposite types, one holding to the religion of authority, the other to the religion of the spirit, one with a theology as rigid as the other's is free and genial.

In this high homage to poetry there is a general concurrence. 'When the poet sings,' says Emerson, 'the world listens with the assurance that a secret of God is to be spoken.'

That poetry is the natural language of religion is shown by the fact that many of the Sacred Books of the world consist entirely of poetry, and that in the Sacred Books of all peoples it is the poetry that is most treasured. In our own Scriptures there is no book that has kept such a hold of the human spirit as the Psalms. Always and everywhere the religious spirit, in its loftiest moments, has found its most satisfying expression in poetry.

The kinship between the two is so close that, like Hippocrates's twins they weep or laugh, they live or die together.

It was a saying of Coleridge that the poet is always a religious man. It is at least beyond all doubt that the lack of Faith deprives the poet of his richest material and most powerful inspiration, and tames the action alike of his imagination and his heart. Of this disability the poets of Doubt have been conscious themselves. Who can read, for example, the poems of Matthew Arnold or Clough without perceiving that it is to this cause the melancholy that is in them is due? In Arnold's case it led to his abandonment of poetic work.

What Francis Thomson said of the child is true of the poet - the eternal child 'he believes in love, he believes in loveliness, he believes in belief." The poet has faith in a divine source and centre of the universe. He believes that Nature will not betray the heart that trusts her. With an anarchic or materialistic or agnostic view of the world one may be a verse-maker but never a poet. The more affirmative a poet is the more he lends himself to the inspirations of faith and hope that visit him, the more he is a poet. Poetry and doubt agree so ill that they cannot live together. A breath of poetry will, in a moment, revive faith when it has been drooping!

A chorus ending from Euripides, and that's enough!

I

One of the most obvious points in the affinity between poetry and religion is the universality of their appeal. Their constituency is not like that of science

of any science- select and sectional. It embraces the whole of human kind. All men, whatever be their casual differences can understand and respond to their speech. They have to do, not with the structure, but with the soul of things. Their knowledge is not reached by intellectual processes, nor are their beliefs the result of reasoning -they are immediate and intuitive. It is the meaning of things for the heart of man that they interpret. Religion is as independent of its science as sensibility to the beauty of nature or art is of æsthetic science. So is poetry. Both are concerned with the whole of things, with the life that is in them, and that informs all their parts. They do not analyze them - they commune with them. They come to know them by congenial acquaintance, by keeping themselves in presence of them and receiving the impression they make on the heart. Religion is native to every man. All the great things of the spirit are as open to the heart as all the great things of the senses are to the eyes. "The soundless depths of the human soul and of eternity have an opening in the breast of the simplest.' What the loftiest spirit has thought or felt he has the capacity to think and feel. The greater a religious teacher is, the more vital the truth he has in him to communicate; he is the less selective of his disciples, he speaks the more in a universal language. There is nothing more remarkable about The Greatest than that He had no respect of persons in seeking an audience for the truth. To none did He speak more readily than to the simplest of the people. If any did not understand Him, He said it was because they were too wise. The things that were hid from them were revealed unto babes. He evidently regarded Himself as a simple speaker, and all that He taught as natural, instinctive and inevitable truth. He spoke as

though all He said was self-evident; everyone had only to go deep enough into his own heart, to find it there.

There is no speech which so corresponds with the universality of religion as poetry. One only needs to be a man to understand it; it requires but a human heart to interpret it. One touch of poetry makes the whole world kin. There is no lock for thee

All doors await thy hand.

The poet's voice carries beyond the intellect and the reason to the same ligion has its seat, and at the height of inmost region of the nature where reits power 'wakes up what has long been wordless in the infinite deep of our own soul.'

II

The passion of poetry is another element in its congeniality with religion and in its peculiar power in the expression of religion. All the living beliefs of the soul, all its deepest convictions, all its aspirations, hopes, and fears, inevitably move it to impassioned expression. The thoughts breathe, the words burn. Where there is vivid vision and a high emotional temperature, language always becomes imaginative, and when poetic genius is conjoined with the religious spirit, speech reaches its greatest power in kindling the same convictions and affections in others. The passion there is in the words (to use a phrase of Wordsworth) carries them alive into the heart. We cannot read unmoved words which palpitate with the deepest emotions of the writer. Didactic writing may set down sound and lucid statements of the truth, but just in the measure in which language is poetic in essence, if not in form, will it communicate a feeling of the truth.

The truest doctrine unimpregnated by a passion of personal conviction and faith can no more excite the religious spirit in man than can the most care