ean.

To the natural question, Why haven't you checked them? almost any young
British naval officer felt like saying: "Check 'em? Try it yourself and
check 'em! You go out there and keep your ship zigzagging full speed
night and day for three years and see how you like it! Go out there in
rough weather and fog with not a minute's let-up, and see if you get to
where the fall of a bucket of a dark night will make you jump three feet
in the air or not! Our ships were not built, and our chaps were not
trained, to beat their rotten game."

So things were when our fellows took hold, and hearing no word from them
for a long time and then but a meagre one, it may be that many a citizen
on this side was saying to himself:

"Well, they're gone, that little flotilla, swallowed up in the mists of
the Atlantic, and that is all we know about them. And now I wonder what
they're doing over there? Are they doing great work or are they tied up
to a dock at the naval base, and their officers and crews roistering
ashore?"

I can say from several weeks' observation later that they were not doing
too much roistering ashore. Before leaving this side I found no evidence
that anybody in Washington wished to suppress the record of what that
little fleet was doing. Secretary Daniels and Chairman Creel of the
Committee on Public Information believed with me that our little fellows
over there were doing things worth recording. This fact is set down here
because many people last summer believed there was too much suppression
of the news of our fighting forces; and suspicion of suppression breeds
distrust. Our fellows perhaps were not doing well. If they were doing
well, wouldn't we be told more?

But they have ideas of their own on these matters over on the other
side, and it is the other side which has most to say of what shall or
shall not be given out for publication. In a previous chapter I have
reported the answer of the British admiral in charge to my request to be
allowed to cruise on an American destroyer. The reply was a flat and
immediate: "No." They did not allow British writers on British ships;
why should they allow an American writer on an American ship?

It had to be explained that despite what they allowed or did not allow,
English papers did publish praiseful items about the deeds of the
British navy; and even if they did not publish such items, conditions
governing publicity in the United States and the British Isles were not