Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/73

1917] custom requires that at church on Sundays the leading dignitary in each community shall mount the reading desk and read the lessons of the day ; Admiral Bayly would perform this office with a simplicity and a reverence which indicated the genuinely religious nature of the man. And in smaller details he was likewise the ancient, tradition-loving Briton. He would never think of writing a letter to an equal or superior officer except in longhand; to use a typewriter for such a purpose would have been profanation in his eyes. I once criticized a certain Admiral for consuming an hour or so in laboriously penning a letter which could have been dictated to a stenographer in a few minutes.

"How do you ever expect to win the war if you use up time this way?" I asked.

"I'd rather lose the war," the Admiral replied, but with a twinkle in his eye, " than use a typewriter to my chiefs!"

Our officers liked to chaff the Admiral quietly on this conservatism. He frequently had a number of them to breakfast, and upon one such occasion the question was asked as to why the Admiral ate an orange after breakfast, instead of before, as is the custom in America.

"I can tell you why," said Commander Zogbaum.

"Well, why is it?" asked the Admiral.

"Because that's what William the Conqueror used to do." "I can think of no better reason than that for doing it," the Admiral promptly answered. But this remark tickled him immensely, and became a byword with him. Ever afterward, whenever he proposed to do something which the Americans regarded as too conservative, he would say :

"You know that this is what William the Conqueror used to do!"

Yet in one respect the Admiral was all American; he was a hard worker even to the point of hustle. He insisted on the strictest attention to the task in hand from his subordinates, but at least he never spared himself. After he had arrived at Queenstown, two years before our destroyers put in, he proceeded to reorganize Admiralty House on the most business-like basis. The first thing he pounced upon was the billiard -room in the basement. He decided that it would make an excellent plotting-room,