Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/72

54 twice a dispute arose between an American destroyer commander and a British ; in such cases Admiral Bayly vigorously took the part of the American. "You did perfectly right," he would say to our men, and then he would turn all his guns against the interfering Britisher. Relations between the young Americans and the experienced Admiral became so close that they would sometimes go to him with their personal troubles; he became not only their commander, but their confidant and adviser.

There was something in these bright young chaps from overseas, indeed, so different from anything which he had ever met before, that greatly appealed to this seasoned Englishman. One thing that he particularly enjoyed was their sense of humour. The Admiral himself had a keen wit and a love of stories; and he also had the advantage, which was not particularly common in England, of understanding American slang and American anecdotes. There are certain stories which apparently only an upbringing on American soil qualifies one to appreciate; yet Admiral Bayly always instantly got the point. He even took a certain pride in his ability to comprehend the American joke. One of the regular features of life at Queenstown was a group of retired British officers fine, white-haired old gentlemen who could take no active part in the war but who used to find much consolation in coming around to smoke their pipes and to talk things over at Admiralty House. Admiral Bayly invariably found delight in encouraging our officers to entertain these rare old souls with American stories ; their utter bewilderment furnished him endless entertainment. The climax of his pleasure came when, after such an experience, the old men would get the Admiral in a corner, and whisper to him: "What in the world do they mean?"

The Admiral was wonderfully quick at repartee, as our men found when they began "joshing" him on British peculiarities, for as naval attache he had travelled exten- sively in the United States, had observed most of our national eccentricities, and thus was able promptly "to come back." In such contests our men did not invariably come off with all the laurels. Yet, despite these modern tendencies, Admiral Bayly was a conservative of the conservatives, having that ingrained British respect for old things simply because they were old. An ancient British