Mr. Ellice
presented me to him, and the old hero asked why I had left
the Navy.
'The finest service in the world; and likely, begad, to have
something to do before long.'
This was only a year before the Crimean war. With his strong
rough features and tousled mane, he looked like a grey lion.
One expected to see him pick his teeth with a pocket
boarding-pike.
The thought of the old sailor always brings before me the
often mooted question raised by the sentimentalists and
humanitarians concerning the horrors of war. Not long after
this time, the papers - the sentimentalist papers - were
furious with Lord Dundonald for suggesting the adoption by
the Navy of a torpedo which he himself, I think, had
invented. The bare idea of such wholesale slaughter was
revolting to a Christian world. He probably did not see much
difference between sinking a ship with a torpedo, and firing
a shell into her magazine; and likely enough had as much
respect for the opinions of the woman-man as he had for the
man-woman.
There is always a large number of people in the world who
suffer from emotional sensitiveness and susceptibility to
nervous shocks of all kinds.
