Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 172
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[Page 172]
we could not but be impressed with the linguistic helplessness of the average English Naval Officer.
In every foreign warship which the writer came across in two years about half the Officers spoke some English and a few spoke it very well while in the Sydney at any rate there was no one who could be intelligible in any language except his own. I dont think we had a word of German amongst us and such French as the wardroom knew was acquired from the perusal of the inscriptions underneath the pictures in La Vie Parisienne.
Fortunately our Naval prestige appears to be such that English has become a sort of Naval Esperanto.
This time we stayed ten days in Kingston and those who could got away for two or three days leave.
The joy of sleeping ashore in shore going beds and without fleas and cockroaches as bed fellows was one not lightly to be discarded. There were several pleasant little spots up in the blue Hills of Jamaica where the harried Navy man might seek solace & rest from the incessant blare of bugles and where one didnt eat & sleep and wake by numbers and hear the incessant blare of bugles. Such spots there were but oh, the getting there!
Jamaican trains we must say at the risk of offending the kindest hosts in the world are the very worst. Some of the New South Wales branch line trains are expresses