afed' themselves. Then there are
always mines, contact with one of which may pulverise an ordinary
wooden drifter into mere matchwood.

The work is fraught with risk. It is every bit as dangerous as that of
the mine-sweepers, and casualties, both in men and in ships, are simply
bound to occur. But little is made of them. A few more names will
appear in the Roll of Honour, and in some obscure newspaper paragraph
we may read that "on Thursday last the armed patrol vessel ------ was
blown up by a mine" or was "sunk by gunfire from a hostile submarine,"
and that "-- members of her crew escaped in their small boat and landed
at ------." That is all; no details whatsoever, nothing but the bare
statement.

But the game still goes on.

The men who cheerfully undergo these risks in their anxiety to serve
their country, were not professional fighters before the war: they are
now; but in the palmy days of peace they were fishermen, seamen through
and through, who, year in and year out, fair weather or foul, were at
sea in their little craft, reaping the ocean's harvest. Their life was
ever a hard and a dangerous one, and the hazards and chances of war
have made it doubly so.

They have none of the excitement of a fight in the open. Much of their
work in protecting the coastwise traffic is deadly in its monotony,
and, as we have become used to it, has come to be looked upon as a
matter of course.

Their gallant deeds are rarely the subjects of laudatory paragraphs in
the newspapers, and the great majority go unrewarded. Even if we do
happen to meet a man wearing a little strip of blue and white ribbon on
his coat or jumper and ask him why he was decorated, he merely laughs,
wags his head, and says ---- nothing.

It is very unsatisfactory of him.

A MINOR AFFAIR

H.M.S. --------
c/o G.P.O., LONDON.
June 30th, 1916.

MY DEAR DANIEL,

You ask me for a more elaborate account of a certain little affair
which took place some time ago. It was merely an episode of a few
light cruisers, anything up to a score of destroyers, and some
seaplanes; quite a minor and a comparatively unimportant little
business which elicited a brief announcement from the Secretary of the
Admiralty, and must have proved rather a Godsend to those newspapers
whose readers were anxious for naval news in any shape or form.

They made a certain amount of fuss about it, and the naval
correspondents were soon hard at work elabo