AFTER TRAFALGAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 2, 4 January 1939, Page 11

AFTER TRAFALGAR

THE COURTEOUS WARRIORS

This generation has learned to discount the "good old days," says the "Manchester Guardian." But perhaps latterly we have found a truer application of the phrase, and if we cannot apply it to times of peace ( we certainly can to times of war. ' Today the case of Trafalgar may be cited as reminding us what a gentlemanly affair war used to be, compared, that is, with what we should have to face today. "We shall have these fellows at last," wrote Collingwood a month before October 21, and Nelson, replying in the same schoolboy spirit, wrote, "They surely cannot escape us. I wish we could get a fine day for it." Well, the day was fine enough—-"a beautiful, misty, sunshiny morning." The fleet went into action as on review, "royals and studding sails on both sides, bands playing, officers in full dress, and the ships covered with ensigns."

And when the battle was over the Spanish admiral sent a present of wine to Collingwood. "My Lord Marquis," replied Collingwood, "I beg your Lordship will accept my best thanks for your kind present of a cask oi most excellent wine. I wish I had anything half so good to send your Excellency; but perhaps an English cheese may be a rarity at Cadiz, and I accordingly take the liberty of begging your Lordship's acceptance of one and a cask of porter." Which so pleased the Spaniards that, they sent "sixty melons and some baskets of grapes, of figs, and of pomegranates." If only there had been more courtesies of that kind in the last war (and after) perhaps we should not now be talking so much about another.