agraphs in telling of this interview, but it is
meant to be more than a statement of one American correspondent. It is
meant to explain a point of view which Americans may find it hard work
to understand. That admiral in charge of our naval base can be
multiplied all the world over. We have them in our own departments.

While waiting the admiral's pleasure I had a look at the port. A fine
harbor, a beautiful harbor, but disfigured now by big, ugly
war-buildings. The houses of the port set mostly up on terraces. There
were several streets, but only one real one in the place, and that ran
along the waterside. All the pubs of the port were naturally located on
this waterside street, and so no tired seafarer had to walk far to get a
drink. Not many of our fellows were to be seen on the streets in
daylight; but at night they were plentiful. A couple of movie theatres
took care of about three hundred of them; the rest walked the waterside
street. There was a port order there that no sailor of ours could stay
in a pub after eight in the evening, so at one minute past eight that
waterside street looked like a naval parade. For the rest the port
offered little or nothing to tempt a man. It was as rainy a place as
ever I was in, and the back streets were crowded with children playing.
Barefooted, healthy children! If they had not been healthy the weather
would surely have killed them off. It was a most moral port, too; too
moral for some people, who thought to put a little life into the place
by making nightly calls there, and made the nightly calls till a local
clergyman protested from the altar, whereupon some muscular young
Christians ran the visitors back aboard their train and out of the
port's history.

Next day the admiral gave me permission to make a cruise with our
destroyers. He seemed to be giving it in the same stubborn fashion that
he had at first refused it--as though he saw his duty in so doing. I was
told that he said he did not think much of my manners; which, of course,
worried me.

I knew quite a few officers in the navy who were commanding destroyers
over there. Any one of them, known or unknown to me, was good enough for
me as a skipper. No man not ready to take a chance puts in for command of
a destroyer over there; and no man not fit is given a command. But I took
passage with one that I had cruised with before--the alert, resourceful
kind with plenty of nerve. If anything should happen, I knew he would b