After dinner, according to witnesses, the officers would retire to these cellars and drink. There is little ventilation, and the atmosphere must have been fairly thick with smoke and fumes. Drinking sometimes continued till 8 A.M.--a horrible hour at which to be drunk. It is reported by Belgians that the officers got through four thousand bottles of wine in three weeks. Taking the high estimate of an average of twenty officers always present, this means ten bottles per head a day--which is absurd. It is probable, however, that the competitors broke or gave away a good many bottles. But there is no doubt they went at it pretty fast; one officer was drunk and incapable for five days on end, and (as apparently there was considered to be a limit of four days for states of coma) on the fifth day was ordered to sea by the Captain of the Flotilla "to cool his head." The whole impression one gets from the local stories is one of fear, morbid excitement, and drink. The pictures conjured up are unpleasant: the early morning scene in the cellars when a few hiccoughing stalwarts still sat over their wine--the guttural attempt at song--the pale glow of electric lamps through swirling smoke--the reek of alcohol--the litter of bottles--and the frightened face of the Belgian chambermaid peering round the angle of the cellar stairs. "_Karl and Schmidt have not returned--God punish the English! Open more bottles, fool, and let us forget that our turn is coming!_"
How the flotillas were able to do efficient work at all is a puzzle; but the Flanders Flotillas did the Allies a lot of harm. Had it not been the custom of the officers to throw off restraint in harbour, we might have suffered a good deal more--how much more only a student of psychology can guess. But there is no doubt of this--and a comparison of the Harwich and Flanders Flotillas shows it--the British take to games to soothe their nerves and the Germans to drink.
It is possibly something to do with this trait that brought the major part of the U-boat successes into the hands of a few special officers. The greater part of the captains did little; a few "aces" compiled huge lists of sunken tonnage to their credit (or otherwise). Judged by British Admiralty standards of efficiency, those few are the only ones who in our Service would have been retained at all.