conscience. It could never have been described as
acutely sensitive, and it never developed much beyond the rudimentary
stage. Nevertheless, it had existed once: and in the early days of the
war it was still sufficiently active to record certain protests and
objections in his mind.

The mysterious forces that were at work in Germany, industriously
remoulding, brutalising and distorting the mind of Oberleutnant von
Sperrgebiet, together with millions of others, had not been blind to
the prejudicial effects of conscience to an evil cause. Imperial
rodomontade and the inflammatory German Admiralty War Orders had
deliberately rejected, one by one, the deep-seated principles of
humanity and chivalry in war. It had been done gradually and
systematically--scientifically, in fact, and in the majority of cases
it succeeded in producing a state of atrophy of the moral sense that
was altogether admirable--from a German point of view.

In the case of Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet, however, these early
qualms had a trick of recurring. They pricked his consciousness at
unexpected moments, like a grass-seed in a walker's stocking.... And
now, as he sat swinging his legs in the warm June sunlight, a whole
procession of such reflections trooped through his mind.

For instance, there arose in his intelligence an obstinate doubt as to
whether the torpedoing without warning of a liner carrying women and
children at the commencement of the war had been quite within the pale
of legitimate Naval warfare. He had met the man who boasted such an
achievement, and for a long time he carried with him the recollection
of that man's eyes as they met his above a beer mug. They had drunk
uproariously together, and von Sperrgebiet heard all about it first
hand, and even fingered enviously the Iron Cross upon the breast of the
teller of the tale. But somehow those eyes had told quite a different
story: and it was that which von Sperrgebiet remembered long after the
wearer of the Iron Cross had gone out into the North Sea mists and
returned no more.

Then there had been the rather unpleasant business of the boat....

It was in mid-winter a long way North during one of the few calm days
to be expected at that period of the year. The Submarine was running
on the surface when the Second-in-Command (of whom more anon) reported
a boat on the starboard bow. They altered course a little and, slowing
down, passed within a few yards of it. It was