SEPTEMBER 9.
Life here doesn't vary much. The captain is up and taking a few days'
leave, though I doubt if he will take command for two or three weeks
yet. But I am having a lovely time running her.
[Sidenote: A veteran New Zealander for dinner.]
The other night we had a very interesting chap for dinner--a New
Zealander he was, who has served in Egypt, Gallipoli, the trenches in
France, and is now in the Royal Naval Reserve. The tales he told were of
wonderful interest. He was modest and seemed to have been a decent sort,
but you could sense the brutalizing effect of war on him. Some of the
things he told were such jokes on the Germans that we laughed right
heartily.
[Sidenote: The beast in man is near the surface.]
The beast in man lies so close to the surface. We think we are human and
law-abiding of our own volition, whereas, as a matter of fact,
nine-tenths of it is from pure habit. It doesn't occur to us to be
anything else. But let all standards and customs be scrapped, let us see
the things done freely that never even entered our minds before, and a
lot of us are liable to develop ape and tiger proclivities. We nearly
all put unconscious limits to our humanity. The most chivalrous and
kindly Westerner or Southerner would admit that massacring Chinamen,
Mexicans, or Negroes is not such a great crime; and the most devoted
mother or father is prone to regard as unspanked brats children who to a
third party appear quite as well as the critic's own.
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