me, only considerably better. Their notions of things were my notions of things, and the bulk of those notions we could convey one to the other without opening our heads.
THINGS ONE TAKES FOR GRANTED
We had a common tradition, one thousand years old, of the things one takes for granted. A warrant officer said something, and the groups melted quietly about some job or other. That same caste of man—that same type of voice—was speaking in the commissariat in Burma; in barracks in Rangoon; under double awnings in the Persian Gulf; on the Rock at Gibraltar—wherever else you please—and the same instant obedience, I knew, would follow on that voice. And a foreigner would never have understood—will never understand! But I understood, as you would have understood had you been there. I went round, to make sure of my rights as a taxpayer under Schedule D; saw my men in my hammocks sleeping, without shading their eyes, four inches from the white glare of my electric; heard my stokers chaffing each other at my ash-shoot; and fetched up by a petty officer who was murmuring fragments of the Riot Act into my subordinate's attentive ear. When he had entirely finished the task in hand he was at liberty to attend to me. 'Hope you've enjoyed your trip, sir. You see' (I knew what was coming) 'we haven't quite shaken down yet. In another three months we shall be something like.'
No ship is ever at her best till you leave her. Then you hold her up as a shining example to your present craft. For that is England.
