"09.40 Battle Fleet meet German Fleet" was the unique order posted up
overnight in the _Queen Elizabeth_. But long before that hour the
stately procession began filing out to sea. H.M. SS. _Canada_,
_Australia_, _New Zealand_, and _South Africa_, were there to remind us
that "United we stand, divided we fall." Admiral Grasset was there in
the _Aube_ to remind us that the French and British had been
brothers-in-arms for fifty-one months of furious war. Admirals Rodman
and Sims were there in the U.S.S. _New York_ to remind us that during
the last nineteen of these fifty-one months the three greatest
self-governing peoples of the world had made common cause against the
barbarous Hun. Finally, and clinchingly, the main body of the whole
Grand Fleet was there, drawn up in two enormous lines-ahead, six miles
apart, and sixteen miles from front to rear, with eighteen flagships
leading its different squadrons, and scores of destroyers ahead,
astern, and on the flanks, not one of which was counted in the
thirty-two long miles of lines-ahead.
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