LITMIR.BIZ

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to the American people. The fact that the Admiral was generally known to our officers as "Uncle Lewis," and that some of those who grew to know him best even called him that to his face, illustrates the delightful relations which were established. Any account of the operations of our navy in the European War would thus be sadly incomplete which ignored the splendid sailor who was largely responsible for their success.

      Another officer who contributed greatly to the efficiency of the American forces was Captain E. R. G. R. Evans, R.N., who was detailed by Admiral Jellicoe at my request to act as liaison officer with our destroyers. No more fortunate selection could have been made. Captain Evans had earned fame as second in command of the Scott Antarctic expedition; he had spent much time in the United States and knew our people well; indeed when war broke out he was lecturing in our country on his polar experiences. A few days before our division arrived Captain Evans had distinguished himself in one of the most brilliant naval actions of the war. He was commander of the destroyer-leader Broke—a "destroyer-leader" being a destroyer of unusually large size—and in this battle three British vessels of this type had fought six German destroyers. Captain Evans's ship sank one German destroyer and rammed another, passing clear over its stern and cutting it nearly in two. The whole of England was ringing with this exploit, and it was a decided tribute to our men that Admiral Jellicoe consented to detail the commander of the Broke. He was a man of great intelligence, great energy, and, what was almost equally to the point, he was extremely companionable; whether he was relating his experiences at the South Pole, or telling us of active life on a destroyer, or swapping yarns with our officers, or giving us the value of his practical experiences in the war, Captain Evans was always at home with our men—indeed, he seemed to be almost one of us.

      The fact that these American destroyers were placed under the command of a British admiral was somewhat displeasing to certain Americans. I remember that one rather bumptious American correspondent, on a visit to Queenstown, was loud in expressing his disapproval of this state of affairs, and even threatened to "expose" us all in the American press. The fact that I was specifically commissioned as destroyer commander also confused the situation. Yet the procedure was entirely proper, and, in fact, absolutely necessary. My official title was "Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Operating in European Waters"; besides this, I was the representative of our Navy Department at the British Admiralty and American member of the Allied Naval Council. These duties required my presence in London, which became the centre of all our operations. I was commander not only of our destroyers at Queenstown, but of a destroyer force at Brest, another at Gibraltar, of subchaser forces at Corfu and Plymouth, of a mixed force at the Azores, of the American battle squadrons at Scapa Flow and Berehaven, Ireland, certain naval forces at Murmansk and Archangel in north Russia, and of many other contingents. Clearly it was impossible for me to devote all my time exclusively to any one of these commands; so far as actual operations were concerned it was necessary that particular commanders should control them. All these destroyer squadrons, including that at Queenstown, were under the command of the American Admiral stationed in London; whenever they sailed from Queenstown on specific duty, however, they sailed under orders from Admiral Bayly. Any time, however, I could withdraw these destroyers from Queenstown and send them where the particular necessities required. My position, that is, was precisely the same as that of General Pershing in France. He sent certain American divisions to the British army; as long as they acted with the British they were subject to the orders of Sir Douglas Haig; but General Pershing could withdraw these men at any time for use elsewhere. The actual supreme command of all our forces, army and navy, rested in the hands of Americans; but, for particular operations, they naturally had to take their orders from the particular officer under whom they were stationed.

      III

      On May 17th a second American destroyer flotilla of six ships arrived at Queenstown. From that date until July 5th a new division put in nearly every week. The six destroyers which escorted our first troopships from America to France were promptly assigned to duty with our forces in Irish waters. Meanwhile other ships were added. On May 22nd the Melville, the "Mother Ship" of the destroyers, arrived and became the flagship of all the American vessels which were stationed at Queenstown. This repair and supply ship practically took the place of a dockyard, so far as our destroyer forces were concerned. Queenstown had been almost abandoned as a navy yard many years before the European War and its facilities for the repair of warships were consequently very inadequate. The Melville relieved the British authorities of many responsibilities of this kind. She was able to do three-quarters of all this work, except major repairs and those which required docking. Her resources for repairing destroyers, and for providing for the wants and comforts of our men, aroused much admiration in British naval circles. The rapidity with which our forces settled down to work, and the seamanly skill which they manifested from the very beginning, likewise made the most favourable impression. By July 5th we had thirty-four destroyers at Queenstown—a force that remained practically at that strength until November. In 1918 much of the work of patrolling the seas and of convoying ships to the west and south of Ireland—the area which, in many ways, was the most important field of submarine warfare—fell upon these American ships. The officers and crews began this work with such zest that by June 1st I was justified in making the following statement to the Navy Department: "It is gratifying to be able to report that the operations of our forces in these waters have proved not only very satisfactory, but also of marked value to the Allies in overcoming the submarine menace. The equipment and construction of our ships have proved adequate and sufficient, and the personnel has shown an unusually high degree of enthusiasm and ability to cope with the situation presented."

      It is impossible to exaggerate the enthusiasm which the arrival of these vessels produced upon the British public. America itself experienced something of a thrill when the news was first published that our destroyers had reached European waters, but this was mild compared with the joy which spread all over the British Isles. The feeling of Americans was mainly one of pride; our people had not yet suffered much from the European cataclysm, and despite the fact that we were now active participants, the war still seemed very far off and unreal. The fact that a German victory would greatly endanger our national freedom had hardly entered our national consciousness; the idea seemed dim, abstract, perhaps even absurd; but in Great Britain, with the guns constantly booming almost within earshot of the people, the horrors of the situation were acutely realized. For this reason those American destroyers at Queenstown immediately became a symbol in the minds of the British people. They represented not only the material assistance which our limitless resources and our almost inexhaustible supply of men would bring to a cause which was really in desperate straits; but they stood also for a great spiritual fact; for the kinship of the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples, which, although separated politically, had now joined hands to fight for the ideals upon which the civilization of both nations rested. In the preceding two years Great Britain had had her moments of doubt—doubt as to whether the American people had remained true to the principles that formed the basis of their national life; the arrival of these ships immediately dispelled all such misgivings.

      Almost instinctively the minds of the British people turned to the day, nearly three hundred years before, when the Mayflower sailed for the wilderness beyond the seas. The moving picture film, which depicted the arrival of our first destroyer division, and which was exhibited all over Great Britain to enthusiastic crowds, cleverly accentuated this idea. This film related how, in 1620, a few Englishmen had landed in North America; how these adventurers had laid the foundations of a new state based on English conceptions of justice and liberty; how they had grown great and prosperous; how the stupidity of certain British statesmen had forced them to declare their independence; how they had fought for this independence with the utmost heroism; how out of these disjointed British colonies they had founded one of the mightiest nations of history; and how now, when the liberties of mankind were endangered, the descendants of the old Mayflower pioneers had in their turn crossed the ocean—this time going eastward—to fight for the traditions of their race. Had Americans been making this film, they would have illustrated another famous episode in our history that antedated, by thirteen years, the voyage of the Mayflower—that is, the landing of British colonists in Virginia, in 1607; but in the minds of the English people the name Mayflower had become merely a symbol of American progress and all that it represented. This whole story appealed to the British masses as one of the great

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