Chapter IV: Part TWO (2)

“Perhaps they are the same!” said Fourgues. “Eh, my boy, we have blown around some miles since that time and the _Pamir_ is still going strong!” And that’s the truth.

It is never very smooth around Norway, but the _Pamir_ was so heavily laden that the seas went over her without her ever flinching. She was, of course, as slow as a tortoise, but in spite of that we got to Trondhjem ahead of time. As we are still without wireless, Fourgues couldn’t know whether we were ahead of the convoy or behind it, so, after rolling for a day in sight of the coast, he put into the fjord, for it seemed hardly worth while burning coal and wearing out the boat for nothing. The semaphore signalled us that the convoy had not been sighted at sea and that we should be notified. So Fourgues was relieved and proceeded to anchor at the farther end, amongst the other ships waiting there.

We waited two days and should have been rather bored, in spite of the bright nights, the midnight sun, the calm waters, and all those things which land-lubbers tell about who have only made one voyage in their lives and have never experienced dirty weather, except that this fellow Fourgues can’t drop anchor anywhere without running up against an old acquaintance. At Trondhjem it was an American with whom he had knocked around once upon a time on the coast of Chili and who, since the war, was plying between the United States, Norway, and Russia. They recognized one another through their field-glasses and the American--Flamigan or Flannigan--came over in his cutter. The two old cronies fell on each other’s necks--it was ten or twelve years since they had met--and all the time we stayed in the fjord, Fourgues, Flannigan and I were as thick as thieves. There was also Flannigan’s mate, who smoked his pipe, drank his whiskey, and said nothing. If you ever meet Flannigan, go right at him without mincing things. He would talk a dog’s hind leg off and is not afraid of saying what he thinks.

Fourgues asked him at once if he had been to Germany, but he swore by all the gods that he hadn’t, though he carries merchandise wherever his Company orders him without feeling obliged to ask to whom it goes. He claimed that he had not been beyond Holland or Denmark, but that’s not quite certain. He might have said it so as not to hurt us, for he loves France, England a little less--having an Irish father--but above all is an American, and told us a lot of things which people in France might take to heart. It was amusing, all the same, to hear someone on affairs in the North, after having listened to Plantat--I believe I told you of him--on those of the East, with an interval of only four months. In this way one gets ideas about the side-shows of the war and what is being thought here, there and elsewhere.

You won’t mind if I tell you what I hear in one place and another, will you? You aren’t obliged to believe any of it, although I write nothing but what I see or hear. And then, you know, fellows such as Plantat and Flannigan are like uncensored newspapers, so there is more chance of their speaking the truth.

Flannigan assures us that the Germans don’t go to sea now much because they won’t risk their merchant vessels in waters where the Allies are sure to nab them sooner or later; but that, in the main, it’s a clever trick to keep for after the war ships that are not worn out, that are in a way almost new, in order to take over the carrying trade everywhere when peace comes and all our merchant vessels are done for. And at bottom, Flannigan can’t be wrong, for if all the ships are made to slog around like the _Pamir_, they will last as long as they do last, but those of the Boches will be in quite a different condition. Fourgues adds that it’s not worth while trying to deny it, as the Allied nations aren’t building a single ship, and anyway a ship can’t be put together in five minutes like a regiment.

So from that side, if we don’t do something in advance, we’re sure to be skinned by the Boches when peace first comes, for they’ll immediately take up all their former trade as well as all that we have lost. The Germans are saying this among the neutrals, and what is more, according to Flannigan, their big commercial and industrial firms in Saxony or Westphalia are at present sending all over the world catalogues of goods to be delivered during the war, from four to six months after the order. Isn’t that the limit? Fourgues told Flannigan it was German bluff! But, no indeed! Flannigan went over to his ship to look for bills of lading of merchandise taken aboard at Rotterdam, Bergen, or elsewhere in the neutral countries, and proved to us, evidence in hand, that he had transported cargoes of products made in Germany since the war and that he was not the only one. It was going to Brazil, the United States, or wherever there were purchasers. He even stated that there had come into France by way of the neutral countries certain hundreds of thousands of tons for which we had paid with our good money. What are we to believe, old man, when the newspapers and the Ministers and the rest keep yelling to us that Germany is economically ruined and dying of starvation? Flannigan can’t be lying, for the neutrals have to get merchandise from somewhere while France is producing nothing and England is beginning to have all she can do to look after herself. As to food, Flannigan says that famine in Germany makes a good story, but that we had better tighten the blockade if we want them to tighten their belts. All this is not very pleasant to hear, but when the person who says it is sincere and has seen things, one can only regret that it’s not known at home and, in any case, that nothing is done to remedy it. This is not to say that they are going to beat us, but just that we ought to prevent them making fools of us.

And they know they’re doing so, as we saw clearly in the German papers Flannigan brought from his boat and which he translated to us by the hour, as neither Fourgues nor I know the language. I’ll not tell all that, because you must know what they are saying from the wireless communications received on the _Auvergne_. But there are a lot of little details by which one can see how they pull the strings and how we move accordingly. For instance, we are forbidden to say where the English fleet is. Well, the illustrated halfpenny papers present the Germans with photographs of the English fleet, the names of all the ships, their anchorage, the number of their guns, and everything. No one in France knows the names of the French generals in command of the armies nor the official description of sectors, but the German papers serve this up to their readers every morning. As to Naval espionage, Flannigan repeated a hundred times that the Germans know more than no matter what high Admiral of the Entente, and that before the news of the movement of an Allied cargo-boat or warship reaches Paris or London it is known in Berlin and corresponding orders have been given.

It would be nothing if they stopped there, but Flannigan says they have understood that the maritime problem will be solved for them by the submarine. He gave us details of such precision that we saw very well he had been in there and had heard the Germans talk at home. Then he recollected himself. But one thing is certain, the Germans are constructing a formidable type of submarine with guns, mines, etc., and though time is needed to manufacture a series of such craft, within a definite period they will have something thoroughly ugly ready in the way of under-sea warfare.

Fourgues repeated to Flannigan how he had been made fun of at the Admiralty in Paris when he talked of submarines, and Flannigan answered that it was our business if we waited till the Huns started; that the Germans didn’t hesitate to say what they meant to do and that when we were once in the soup it wouldn’t do any good to call them pirates while they simply went on sinking our ships. In regard to piracy, Flannigan, who, being a neutral, is above all a partisan of the freedom of the seas, says that everybody is laughing at the Allies with our scrupulous observance of the Hague Convention and that the Germans won’t be more scrupulous at sea than they are on land, if they have the means, because the new international laws will be made by the victor and because, with their submarines, they will soon show us that the old ones no longer count. Flannigan reasoned well:

“You established your German frontier by the Treaty of Frankfort and you announced this diplomatically to the world. Did that hinder Germany from invading you where she wanted to, or you from entering Alsace which you had recognized as a German possession? Therefore, in the stress of war treaties no longer mean anything, for your first effort is to destroy them. And so what’s the good of yelping about international laws? Germany doesn’t care a damn and is counting on victory to change them to her advantage. Why don’t you do the same? Everything that links you with Germany is destroyed. Her signature is no longer worth the paper it’s written on, yet you continue to embarrass yourselves with it till the whole world believes that it is Germany who makes war while you follow after, six months or a year behind. It’s like their cards for meat, sugar, the national register, and all that, at which your papers poke fun, saying that Germany is at the end of her strength and that next winter she will be dead--you will come to that, too, if the war goes on. But Germany, who prepared for war during peace, is preparing for peace during war. She does at once, without seeming to be forced to it, that which you will be forced and constrained to do by circumstances. The same with asphyxiating gas, liquid fire, and all the horrors she employs; when your _poilus_ have had enough of dying like flies, you will understand that it is as natural to kill with fire and poison as with shells and bullets. In short, my boys, if you don’t want to have it go on for years and if you want victory, get a move on, for Germany is not going to omit a single means of annoying you.”

I should never finish telling you all that Flannigan said, and all was confirmed during a walk we took with him on shore. We talked with Norwegians who had been in Germany. They told us about the Zeppelins that are going up and down the North Sea and the Baltic every day, whereas there is not a single balloon around England or France.

So, of course, it is not worth while saying that we shall smash the Germans at sea.

As soon as an English destroyer arrives in the North Sea, the Zeppelins announce it in the ports and nothing is left outside but submarines and mines. Seriously, Naval warfare is not what it was, old man, but the Boches are the only ones who seem to have found it out. The Norwegians and the Swedes who were there did not say much--out of politeness, because we were French, but we understood that they think Germany has the advantage, and that, after having chosen to make war, she fights better than we.

Fourgues and I remembered all this when we left and we discussed it till we got to Archangel. The _Pamir_ picked up the convoy at sea ten miles from Trondhjem and we went around Norway together. There were two English cruisers and four destroyers to escort fourteen merchant vessels. It was a fine convoy and all those ships together looked like a naval squadron, but the people who decide the formation of convoys would do well not to group boats going fifteen knots with those which can make seven or eight only by going full speed ahead. After two days’ sailing, the _Pamir_, which was about in the middle, began to lose sight of those farthest in advance, as well as of those farthest behind. The convoying ships kept tearing up and down to keep us together. We did get together somehow or other, but after the North Cape there was a little spell of choppy seas and rolling and pitching and as much visibility as in a tunnel. It lasted twenty hours, and when the weather cleared there were only six of us out of the fourteen. The fast ones had run ahead; the cripples had simply disappeared. Naturally none of the absent had wireless and the warships spent three days hunting for them. There was one with a damaged rudder that had jammed itself on the jagged reefs they have up there and split in two. The people were fished out, but there’s no fear of the cargo getting to the Russian front.

Finally our convoy dribbled in to Archangel in bunches of three or four. It is the best time up here. After a month and a half or two months, everything will be frozen out, literally and figuratively. But it’s not with fourteen cargoes nor fifty nor a hundred that one could give the Russians what they need! The fleet of the whole world would not be enough, but it is well to give them all we can. It will serve them right--and us too--for letting the Germans get in everywhere! It seems that at the declaration of war three-fourths of their factories were stopped because it was the Germans who ran them. Mechanics can’t be taught in forty-eight hours, as I know after my experience with the shaft of the _Pamir_; and if you add that the Boches simply appropriated all their factories in Poland, you can see why the _Pamir_ and her consorts must fly to Archangel with war-material. They loaded us at Brest without even giving me forty-eight hours to go to La Rochelle, under pretext that the Russians were waiting for us as for the Messiah. But, Lor’ love you, here there’s no hurry. They have already taken twenty days to unload a part of the fourteen ships and are not nearly through. At the time of writing, the _Pamir_ has had only her forward hold emptied--the aft hold can wait! They sent us away from the docks because of another convoy which had arrived in the meantime and which they began to unload. When all these boats are half emptied they are sure they can’t get away and they let them rot in a corner of the docks.

And whether they hurry or not, it’s all the same. The things lie on the docks in heaps in the rain and the wind. From time to time a train comes along in a leisurely manner, loads up a little pile without hurrying itself, and starts away again in two or three days. If it ever reaches the Carpathians it will be because the track goes downhill. Everywhere it’s the same thing. They say that Russia is great, that she is invincible, that it will take ten years, that the Boches will get to Moscow.... _Nitchevo!_ Napoleon went away again and the Russian-Japanese business wasn’t a defeat. Such, old man, is the country where I find myself at present!

Fourgues could hardly hold himself in at first to see the _Pamir_ lying by idle. Now he has found some friends, Russian Naval and Military officers who come on board and with whom he lunches ashore. When I ask him how much longer we are going to stay here, he answers, “_Nitchevo!_” in his Provence accent and the Russians roar with laughter. They drink hard and try to get him to do the same, but Fourgues is determined not to drink more than is good and uses the occasion to beat them at poker. Since they will poison themselves up here, he seizes the opportunity to increase his income, the old fox. Mornings, during the cleaning, he tells me what they said when they were half full. Not a few of them are pro-German, especially among the nobility. It seems that there have been formidable scandals at court and in the Ministries. When I try to pump him, Fourgues answers that he ought not to say anything, but that he is glad he is French, for, although at home we do all sorts of stupid things, at least no one is working for the King of Prussia. As Fourgues never jokes about such matters, I believe he must have been hearing some pretty raw stories--about the railways in particular. Cars are lost in Russia, and even whole trains, without anyone knowing what has become of them. And what will they say in Brest when they know that we lay here more than twenty days with their rifles!

Finally, yesterday, Fourgues said that he had had his bellyful of Archangel, vodka, and poker--perhaps he had been losing!--and he got hold of an officer of the port who came along talking hot air, and was promised that the _Pamir_ will be unloaded to-morrow. I dare say that means eight days, but, at any rate, as one of the English cruisers will sail this evening for _Youmanie_,[1] I shall give her this letter, having finished my twenty pages. You can’t call yourself neglected--eh, old chap? But you are good, too, sending me as much news as you can and your books. I have finished the first volume of the Naval History. I will write about it if I remember. Except for reading, I am bored to death, for at the rate at which the _Pamir_ has been going, I wonder where on earth they will send us next, and in the meantime, what is to become of La Rochelle? Let us hope that by the end of the year, we shall have peace or the wedding! Don’t laugh at me, old boy. I have had about all I can stand.

[1] England.

MUDROS,
_December 18, 1915_.

Here we are again in the Levant after all, but not without adventures, and it’s really no joke to have wandered all round Europe from Archangel to the Dardanelles only to fall into our present scrape. At Toulon I received your letter of the end of September in answer to mine from Archangel. Thanks very much. I shall speak of it if I have time, but for the moment I am going to tell you the adventures of the old _Pamir_ for the last three months. You might indeed call us the Wandering Jews! The longer it lasts, the more they grab merchant ships wherever they find them, putting no matter what on the deck provided it goes away--and to Hell with it!

Fourgues finally did get his stuff unloaded at Archangel and succeeded in sailing without a convoy. He said it wasn’t worth while losing time with boats that can’t get up any speed, and that when there are too many hookers and not enough convoying ships it’s just a little bit too good a target for submarines. Wherever we called I noticed that Fourgues had not been far wrong when he said, at the beginning, that the submarines were going to count later on. The officials are beginning to find them a nuisance. What would happen if all those bureaucrats had to go to sea! They might then find something to say besides: “Pshaw! Don’t believe everything you hear, and, anyway, we sink so many that soon there won’t be any more!” Of course, after that one can only shut up. Mum’s the word in the newspapers and everywhere else!... I will tell you all my little notions as occasion arises.

The _Pamir_ was told to go to Newcastle for orders and, in case there were none, to take aboard coal. We were pretty well shaken up as we were empty. On the return trip we met a good many boats going to Archangel. They needed to hurry, for the ice will soon begin, and if the Russians do not set themselves seriously to work, they can’t smash the Germans with the stuff they received this summer. What good does it do not to tell the public the truth, when sooner or later it is sure to come out? They tell us that in two weeks or in three months everything will go like greased lightning, and then, three months later, things are just the same or a little bit worse. And on whom shall the public lay the blame? On those who have deceived it! For they knew that things would go badly and it was not worth while to say they would go well, and the public is obliged to believe the leaders are to blame, because they didn’t know how to get out of the scrape. You can’t deny it, it’s those who govern who are on the wrong track.

At Newcastle they told us to go to Southampton to ship equipment for the English Expeditionary Forces in France. We had just enough coal to get us across and the _Pamir_ went down the North Sea and the Channel, the papers everywhere saying that the Channel is completely closed to German submarines by means of nets and a host of ingenious devices; saying too, that to reach the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, they will have to go around by way of Scotland, and as they haven’t sufficient radius of action there is nothing further to be feared from them. I don’t know much about it, but having seen what the Germans have done elsewhere, I expect them to find some way of getting through those ingenious devices and also of constructing submarines that will go to the ends of the earth. It’s as plain as the nose on your face and to say the contrary is to act the ostrich. Fourgues says there will be a painful awakening, but that everybody will blame it on the Boches instead of recognizing that we did not make proper provision for the danger. He gets into awful rages, but as far as I’m concerned, if I can only go to La Rochelle I ask for nothing more.

At Southampton we took on motor-cars and tractors for the English Army and carried them to Havre. I had time in England to make a trip on land where there are posters everywhere, begging folks to enlist. It really does look as if the English were bestirring themselves more than last year when they regarded this as a mere Colonial war. That’s not to say they have as yet been affected as seriously as we. They still leave swarms of Boches at liberty, their business firms continue to ship cargoes to the neutral neighbours of Germany, and of course, they can’t with one stroke of the pen re-form an army ready for active service. The majority of their regular officers have already been killed and they are obliged to make captains and first lieutenants out of good cricket and golf players. It will take time for them to train. As to equipment, it’s the same thing--they have hardly begun to mobilize their factories for war production because they did not want to stop British foreign trade. But we can’t say much, for we did the same and it’s hardly a matter of weeks since France began to go to England, America, and Spain for materials--where there are plenty. The Germans went to work early and we’re a year behind them.

There is an awful confusion at Havre and they say Rouen is the same. Really it’s astonishing how the responsible people let cars and war-material pile up in the ports. That comes doubtless from the general ignorance in France as regards all maritime matters and also from the fact that the high Naval officers who are in command at the commercial ports know nothing about traffic. Anyway, Fourgues has to fight to get his stuff unloaded at Havre. They piled it in a heap on the dock, and when we left it was still there in the rain.

While we were there we got orders to go to Marseilles, to get a cargo for the army of the East. The _Pamir_ could have taken from the wharf at Havre some hundreds of tons destined for Toulon or Marseilles; in this way the freightage would have cost less. But it was officially arranged for to go by rail and we left in ballast. Once more we went around Spain without paying for our trip, and even so arrived ahead of time, as our cargo had not all reached Marseilles--because the trains were held up as usual. The papers may talk what rot they like about the preparations made and all the success that will attend us on all the fronts next spring, but we who do the work of transporting the necessary material see plainly that we shan’t outstrip the Boches at our present rate of going.

You know I’ve no excess of admiration for the Boches, and if there were no other reason I should have a grudge against them for the dog’s life they have made us lead for a year and a half, and because of them I don’t see when I can go home. But you know, there are things they do better than we and which we should learn from them if we don’t want to lose months and years. How does it help us to refuse to imitate them in such matters? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We shan’t become savages because we forestall them in their tricks. Much good it will do us to wait till we’re compelled to imitate them. In the Naval History you lent me I read recently that the Coalition only beat Napoleon when by dint of being beaten, they learnt to copy him. And it took them fifteen or twenty years, and if they had caught on sooner it wouldn’t have taken so long. Why is it that in France we still run the limited and express trains which I saw arriving in Havre and Marseilles? The Norwegians and Swedes told us that for a long time the Germans have been running all their trains at the same speed, the passengers in between the goods. In that way traffic is not delayed, whereas in France, with the idea of making people behind the lines believe that the war is being won as easily as a game of cards, they put on a lot of fast trains which are only of use to the shirkers and which hold up the shells and war-material at all the stations. So how can you expect things to happen?

I pondered all this when the _Pamir_ was ordered to anchor at Estaque, near Marseilles, for five or six days, as there wasn’t a single foot of unencumbered dock in the port of Marseilles and all because of the congestion on the railways. One day twenty-four of us were rolling and pitching in the mistral; another day there were thirty-two, empty and loaded, each earning a thousand or two thousand francs a day doing nothing.

I tell you, if a Boche submarine came into this road, which is open and without protection, about one or two in the morning, she could send a good half-dozen of craft like the _Pamir_ to the bottom and get away before anyone had time to say “Jack Robinson!” But the land-lubbers, civilians or service men, said the idea was really too funny and that submarines wouldn’t dare come near the coast of France, either here or on the Atlantic! After that, all we can do is to pull ourselves together and await the torpedo with arms folded.

Finally they towed us from Estaque to Marseilles, and then, as the authorities had made us lie around for nearly a week without doing a thing, we must take on board three thousand tons of cargo right off, at one go. The country would be in danger if the _Pamir_ hadn’t slung her hook in forty-eight hours! They made us roll down into our hold the contents of thirty trains, which came in solemn procession, night and day, without stopping. The _Pamir_ was away off to “Hell and gone” in the basin of Arenc and all the stuff was for Mudros--carriages, provisions, shells, guns, shoes--everything, I tell you.

They were tumbled in as they came and I had to stow them. You can imagine how easy it was. Fourgues never ceased cursing, saying that if we had bad weather the cargo would shift to blazes. But they told him to shut his mouth, and they didn’t pick their words. There was one train which came with cases from Milo. There had been a mistake, and they turned out not to be for the _Pamir_, but for another boat. They arrived about midnight of the second night, and I said to the military officer in charge that it must be a mistake. I didn’t half catch it. He fairly wiped his feet on me, saying that Mudros, Milo, and the whole caboodle, they were all in the East, and that he was ordered to pack into the _Pamir_ all the trains that came and that I was not going to send that one back when they were already late. That Johnny wouldn’t get through a geography exam.

So I shipped the things because the Army bloke ordered me to, but when I informed Fourgues in the morning, he told the Navy bloke, who had come to give us our sailing orders. And the Navy bloke was furious, and said that we were idiotic to load on stuff for Milo when the rest of the material was for Mudros. The military bloke had gone to breakfast. The Navy bloke went after him and they said a few pleasant things to each other. At last it was agreed that the _Pamir_ should stop at Milo and unload the cases and then go on to Mudros. We closed the holds and battened down the hatches and were ready to leave our moorings when another train with a dozen cases of aeroplanes pulled in and came alongside. The non-commissioned officer in charge jumped on board and asked for the skipper:

“Are you the _Pamir_?”

“Looks like it,” said Fourgues.

“All right; here are twelve aeroplanes for you to take.”

“Well, old fellow, we can tow them if you wish, but as for taking twelve aeroplanes on board, it’s now too late, our hold is full.”

“Not at all! I’ve been waiting at Miramar for two days and I just got the order to-night to send them by the _Pamir_. The matter is one of the utmost urgency.”

“Oh, yes. And how long ago did your utmostly urgent train leave Paris?”

“Twenty-three days ago!”

What can one do, old man? Such things simply disarm one! When Fourgues heard that the poor devil had been knocking about the main lines of France for twenty-three days with twelve aeroplanes to look after he said we would take all we could. We found places for six, three forward and three aft. The cases are regular monuments, and when they dangle at the end of the cable you have to look out so as not to get your jaw stove in. And to make all that fast! The deck was just broad enough to take them, however, and we served lines over them and lashed them to starboard and port. They rose as high as the bridge.

At this point our old friend the Army bloke paid us another visit and said that, as the _Pamir_ was ordered to take all twelve cases, we must load the remaining six in a second tier on top of the first. Then Fourgues fairly let rip. He produced cusses that I had never heard before and I assure you they were great! He said that his boat was as full as an egg; that it was not the custom to pile cargo higher than the masts; that he had to see to navigate; that he was not sure the six cases we had already wouldn’t pitch overboard with the first good blow, and that the other six might go by the air-route, perhaps, but certainly not on the _Pamir_. Thereupon he gave the order to sail and we skipped out, leaving the three blokes, the railway man, the Army officer, and the sailor, discussing each other’s characters on the quay.

Fortunately we had no really bad weather from Marseilles to Milo--nothing but moderate rolling and pitching, just enough to get the wind up us about the stowage of our cargo. We could hear hollow sounds of boxes knocking around the hold and some of the stuff must be in a nice state. We didn’t open it up, but it will be lovely and we are the ones that will catch it! However, Fourgues will give as good as he gets, for he can’t stand being blamed when it’s somebody else’s fault. I don’t know what the aeroplanes in their cases will look like. As they were on the deck they swung about a good deal, and no matter how much we tightened the lines with which they were lashed, every time the boat rolled they shifted a little with a “Bang!”

At Milo no one wanted to unload the cases we had taken from the wrong train because the Head of the military unit to whom they were consigned, who should have been there, had gone away several days before. We haven’t yet been able to ascertain his whereabouts. It’s the same old story over and over--enough to make one wild!

In the harbour at Milo there were a lot of war-vessels--French, English, Russian, and Italian--for it seems we are ready to fall upon the Greeks if they keep on keeping on. The English, who got here first, didn’t lose any time before installing nets and a barrier against submarines. It’s very nice to say in the papers and on the platforms that submarines don’t exist, but it’s better to take measures, for they are beginning to sink ships a little bit everywhere. Fourgues says he would have preferred to be wrong, but that everything he had thought is beginning to come true and that it doesn’t amuse him to act the part of Cassandra quite so successfully.

All this time the _Pamir_ continues to be without wireless or guns or anything to protect her, and she is not the only one. At Milo and at Mudros, where we are now, out of every ten ships seven or eight have no wireless, and by gum, you should hear the skippers and officers of those cargo boats! But all they say and all they think, what difference does it make? Everybody knows they will keep on just the same! If they are done in by a submarine the paper will say, “Hun piracy!! Such and such a boat sunk! There were no military on board!” Damn! It’s simply too idiotic the way things at sea are run.

The _Pamir_ went straight on to Mudros without unloading anything. You can have no idea of the moving that’s going on all over the country. They are evacuating everywhere. Good-bye, Constantinople! Good-bye, end of Turkey! Good-bye, Gallipoli, the Dardanelles, the coast of Asia! Good-bye, everything! All the munitions and men that are not too badly damaged are going to Salonica. We are going to save Serbia if it isn’t too late. Suvla is evacuated. The English left millions of francs worth of material which they set on fire. Seddul-Bahr, Kum-Kalé, and Gaba are being rolled into one to make an army of the East, and it’s not a bit too soon to think of putting troops at Salonica, for where, I wonder, are the Boches going to be stopped? It seems that this was an idea of our _Président du Conseil_. It’s a jolly good thing he put his finger on the spot, for the Dardanelles business was done for several months ago. With an army in Salonica and a Franco-British army at that, we can keep the Boches from getting down any farther. What couldn’t they do in the Mediterranean, I wonder, if they had Greece and the Peloponnesus? But all that is politics again.

The _Pamir_ is waiting at Mudros. All the empty vessels are taken to hasten the evacuation. We are as full as an oyster, and we are left here because there’s no room at Salonica. Where the deuce shall we unload our different sorts of merchandise, our aeroplanes, and our victuals? I don’t know any more than you! But one thing I do know--nothing of all we have brought from Marseilles will ever reach its destination! Oh, it will be used somewhere or other, but everything in this country is upside down and all the _Pamir_ can do is to empty her hold on to the wharf she’s ordered to without troubling about what becomes of it. All this is not funny, old man!

And how long are we going to stay here? Fourgues raises Hell, but that doesn’t help matters. The other ships come and go, but the _Pamir_ receives no orders. I hope she will go to Salonica because I want a squint at what is going on there, but ever since the beginning of the war nothing we have expected has happened, so I don’t care much what it is as long as it can’t be La Rochelle.

So long, old man. I got your last from Bizerta when the _Auvergne_ was in dry-dock. You gave me a good bit of Navy gossip and I should like to comment on it, but a boat is about to leave for Malta and I want to get this letter off. All I can say is that it seems to me not much better on the warships than on hookers like the _Pamir_. May God grant that on land, in politics, and the diplomatic service they are cleverer than our Naval chiefs! My sole consolation is that the Germans seem to be more fat-headed than we; else, with their preparation and our mistakes at the beginning, they would have mopped us up long since. Not having done so, they won’t be able to. With this consoling thought I wish you a happy New Year and hope that we shall meet in 1916. _Je t’embrasse._