keen knowledge and interest in commercial ship-practice at the transport
office made for complex situations; hesitancies and conflicting
orders added to the arduous business. Under feverish pressure a ship
would be unloaded on to quay space already congested, ballast be
contracted for--and delivered; a swarm of carpenters, working day and
night, would fit her for carriage of troops. At the eleventh hour some
one idly fingering a tide-table would discover that the vessel drew too
much water to cross the bar of her intended port of discharge. (The
marine superintendent was frequently kept in ignorance of the vessel's
intended destination.) Telegraph and telephone are handy--"Requisition
cancelled" is easily passed over the wires! _As you were_ is a simple
order in official control, but it creates an atmosphere of misdirection
almost as deadly as German gas. Only our tremendous resources, the sound
ability of our mercantile superintendents, the industry of the
contractors and quay staffs, brought order out of chaos and placed the
vessels in condition for service at disposal of the Admiralty.

Despite all blunders and vacillations our expedition was not unworthy of
the emergency. How much better we could have done had there been a
considered scheme of competent control must ever remain a conjecture.
Four years of war practice have improved on the hasty measures with
which we met the first immediate call. Sea-transport of troops and
munitions of war has become a highly specialized business for naval
directorate and mercantile executant alike. Ripe experience in the
thundering years has sweetened our relations. The naval transport
officer has learnt his trade. He is better served. He has now an
adequate executant staff, recruited largely from the Merchants' Service.
With liberal assistance he relies less on telegraph and telephone to
advance his work: our atmosphere is no longer polluted by the miasma of
indecision, and by the chill airs of the barracks.

Of our Naval War Staff, the transport officer was the first on the
field, but his duties were only concerned with ships requisitioned for
semi-naval service. For long we had no national assistance in our purely
commercial seafaring. Our sea-rulers (if they existed) were unconcerned
with the judicious employment of mercantile tonnage: some of our finest
liners were swinging the tides in harbour, rusting at their
cables--serving as prison hulks for interned enemies. Our servic