My wife’s grandfather went through the battle of Jutland as a sixteen-year-old midshipman. Among the books that have come down to us from him was an anonymous work, published in 1916, From Dartmouth to the Dardanelles, the diary of another 16-year-old midshipman who hadsurvived the sinking of his ship off Galipoli in 1915. The book was edited and published by the midshipman’s mother, after he wrote it convalescing at home in 1915 . Her preface now appears a work of war-mongering horror, but if you are going to monger wars and defend at any cost an empire, this is the attitude that mothers will have to learn.
Let it be remembered that these boys have looked Death in the face — not once only, but many times;and that, like our soldiers in the trenches — who no longer say of their “pals” ” He is dead” but only ” He has gone west” — they have learned to see in the Great Deliverer not a horror, not an end, but a mighty and glorious Angel, setting on the brows of their comrades the crown of immortality ; and so when the call comes they, like Sir Richard Grenville of old, ” with a joyful spirit die.”
What would be unnatural is that their stupendous initiation could leave them only the careless children of a few months back.
The mobilisation of the Dartmouth Cadets came with a shock of rather horrified surprise to a certain section of the public, who could not imagine that boys so young could be of any practical utility in the grim business of War. There was, indeed, after the tragic loss of so many of them in the Cressy, the Aboukir, and the Hogue, an outburst of protest in Parliament and the Press. In the first shock of grief and dismay at the sacrifice of such young lives, it was perhaps not unnatural; but it argued a limited vision. Did those who agitated for these Cadets to be removed from the post of danger forget, or did they never realise, that on every battle-ship there is a large number of boys, sons of the working classes, whose service is indispensable ?
It seemed to me that if my son was too young to be exposed to such danger, the principle must apply equally to the son of my cook, or my butcher, or my gardener, whose boys were no less precious to them than mine was to me.
In the great band of Brothers who are fighting for their country and for the triumph of Right and Justice there can be no class distinction of values. Those who belong to the so-called “privileged classes” can lay claim only to the privilege of being leaders — first in the field and foremost at the post of danger. It is the only possible justification of their existence; and at the post of danger they have found their claim to priority hotly and gloriously contested by the splendid heroes of the rank and file.
I wonder, too, how many mothers of the chickenhawks — almost all of whom were born members of the American ruling class — would take this view of their sons’ obligations to the poor bastards from West Virginia and points south who are their servants’ children or cousins.
Of course, these families were moulded by a brutally militaristic education. My grandfather-in-law was, according to family history, the most-beaten midshipman of his year. The midshipman’s school day started like this:
At 6 o’clock, roused by the réveillé, we scurry to the bath-room, take the prescribed cold plunge, and then dress. Hot cocoa and ship’s biscuit are served in the mess-room and followed by an hour’s study. At 7.30 “fall in ” in the long corridor called the ” covered way,” which leads from the dormitories to the mess-room. All the other terms having gone in to breakfast, our particular batch of cadets is called to ” attention.” Then comes the order : ” Right turn 
” — and helter-skelter, as fast as we can lay foot to the ground, we rush along the hundred yards of corridor to the mess-room door and fight our way through that narrow opening. Woe betide the unfortunate who falls in the mêlée! He will get trampled on by all behind, and when finally he is able to rise to his feet, dazed and bruised, after the rush has gone by, he will be assisted on his way by the unsympathetic toes of the cadet captain’s boots. Moral : Keep your footing !
