“Shoddy Chivalry” — A Naval Chadband (Published in the “Pall-Mall Gazette”)
So now we know! No longer need we denounce the “submarine menace”; no longer need we (as the German Press suggests) “grow pallid with fear,” for we are in “brave and gallant hands!” “Brave and gallant” are the noble creatures who sink hospital ships; “brave and gallant” are the sharers of dividends in the corpse-fat factory; “brave and gallant” are the raiders who sought to intercept the Prime Minister on his way back from France across Channel in order to make short work of him and his escort—“brave and gallant” are they all! Our own Vice-Admiral at Dover implied as much when, with all the unctuousness of Dickens’s immortal Mr. Chadband, he laid a wreath of flowers on the coffin of one of the Hun raiders with the inscription: “To a brave and gallant enemy!” He spared no wreath and offered no tribute to any of the dead among our own bluejackets, whose “brave and gallant” conduct had succeeded in beating off and sinking the enemy’s ships; they were “only” British sailors. But for the dead Huns, this British Vice-Admiral publicly displayed the tenderness of a twin brother. One wonders what Nelson would have said to such an action? How does it accord with the Defence of the Realm? One can imagine the noble dust of the victor of Trafalgar stirring for very shame at such a lack of dignity at the very time when British ships are being wickedly sunk and British lives wickedly lost by the nefarious “brave and gallant” brutality of an enemy with whom honour is a mere straw. It may perhaps be easier now to understand the rumours that these “brave and gallant” Huns are allowed to work with our men in British docks, where they watch our ships loaded with millions of munitions, and count up our troops leaving for the front, and then, without doubt, communicate with their kinsmen of the submarines, letting them know the hour and moment of departure! No wonder that our ships are sunk! Such methods prepare the way for their sinking. No action is taken by the authorities to put a stop to the inroad of German labour in the docks alongside of the British—a state of things which, on the face of it, invites and encourages spying and treachery. Such scandals are “an offence that’s rank, And smells to Heaven”; and the powers in office who allow them to go on without check are nearly as guilty of the loss of torpedoed ships and lives as the Huns themselves. And when a British Vice-Admiral sets the hall-mark of “brave and gallant” on even a dead specimen of the most treacherous, inhuman, and barbaric foe his country has ever had to contend with, we can hardly wonder at anything except the amazing excess of patience, wellnigh lethargy, with which the British people tolerate such an exhibition of Chadbandism in the Navy. One is thankful for the plain speaking of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, who, in the House of Lords, designated this action as one of “maudlin sentimentality and shoddy chivalry.” There spoke the sturdy seaman and loyal Britisher, untainted by the pro-German measles, which infect only the degenerates of our race. The Vice-Admiral at Dover, by his openly displayed admiration for the Hun, would seem to wish us to understand that he is something neither British nor of the sea—“neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring.” We can almost hear him soliloquising over the flower-strewn coffin of the “brave and gallant” Hun: “My friend, you are to me a pearl, you are to me a diamond, you are to me a gem, you are to me a jewel! And why, my friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A fish of the sea or river? No. You are a Hun, my friend! You are much worse than any beast of the field; more voracious than any bird of the air; more slippery than any fish of the sea or river! Oh, how glorious to be a Hun! And if I went forth as far as the Southampton Docks and there saw a ‘brave and gallant’ fellow-countryman of yours taking stock of troops and munitions, and I was to come back and call unto me Sir Edward Carson and say unto him, ‘Lo the docks are barred against Huns,’ would that be terewth?”
No; it would not be “terewth”—unless, as the original Chadband propounded, such terewth, or truth, were another form of deception. Until we have loyal men “above suspicion” in authority at home we shall never satisfy our Allies abroad. America will be unable to understand a British Vice-Admiral laying flowers on the coffin of an enemy whose intent was, without doubt, to sink and slay a valuable life on which much of Britain’s welfare depends, any more than she will understand the collection of a large sum of money for the assistance of Germans in England (more than £17,000) to which liberal subscriptions have been made by two German members of the Privy Council. As Mark Twain observed during his tour in Palestine, “Blessed if I believe a turtle can sing!”