is fine realism in Seaman Gunner Brown's letter to the parents who
waited for tidings in their cottage on the Isle of Wight:

We and another ship in our squadron came across two German
cruisers. We routed one and started on the second, but battle
cruisers soon finished her off. Another then appeared, and
after we had plunked two broadsides into her she slid off in
flames.

Every man did his bit, and there was a continuous stream of
jokes. We penciled on the projectiles, "Love from England,"
"One for the Kaiser," and other such messages. The sight of
sinking German ships was gloriously terrible, funnels and
masts lying about in all directions, and amidships a huge
furnace, the burning steel looking like a big ball of sulphur.
There was not the slightest sign of fear, from the youngest to
the oldest man aboard.

[Illustration: ENGLAND'S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR, FIELD MARSHAL EARL
KITCHENER.

(_From the Painting by Angelo._)]

[Illustration: GEN. VON BISSING,

Recently Made Military Governor of Belgium to Succeed Field Marshal von
der Goltz.

(_Photo from Ruschin._)]

But it remained for a naval Lieutenant, whose name is not given, to
describe, in a letter to a friend, one of the most remarkable incidents
of the war, an incident which might have occurred in the imagination of
Jules Verne or of H.G. Wells in his youth. He wrote:

The Defender having sunk an enemy, lowered a whaler to pick up
her swimming survivors; before the whaler got back an enemy's
cruiser came up and chased the Defender, and thus she
abandoned her whaler. Imagine their feelings--alone in an open
boat without food, twenty-five miles from the nearest land,
and that land the enemy's fortress, with nothing but fog and
foes around them. Suddenly a swirl alongside and up, if you
please, pops his Britannic Majesty's submarine E-4, opens his
conning tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives,
and brings them home, 250 miles!

In his introduction to the book St. John Adcock calls the private
letters of the soldiers "the most potent of recruiting literature."
Undoubtedly this is true of some of them. The casual, almost flippant,
records of splendid heroism, the reflection of a spirit of gay courage,
the description of the most picturesque and romantic aspects of
battle--these tend, certainly, to fill the mind of the stay