Hard-Boiled Sea Lords

Viscountess Astor, M. P. sits for the great naval port of Plymouth. When the Royal Navy staged its "greatest mutiny in 134 years" (TIME, Sept. 28), the Noble Lady was naturally distressed. Rushing down to Plymouth she arrived just as the unrepentant Atlantic Fleet steamed in. Last week Plymouth's Nancy was back in London breathless with naval news.

"For the first time in my life," she cried, "I saw the Atlantic Fleet given a silent reception at Plymouth! . . . But our gloom soon turned to hope when we got in touch with the men of the lower deck. I spent three days going among them, and never once came across a sailor who realized the consequences of his action. ... It is hard for anybody who does not know the British sailor to realize the simplicity of his point of view, but I assure my friends in America and elsewhere that the British Navy is as safe and sound as ever."

Mutiny among Great Britain's jolly tars was due, Lady Astor thought, to "their sense of fair play. . . . The facts are these: They heard naval pay was to be cut. They looked into the cuts, and these seemed unfair to them."

Many a Briton has wanted to know if the Great Mutiny sprang from small Socialist cells or Communist cankers within the Fleet. ''I asked man after man if there had been any organization," declared Lady Astor, "and they all said no, that there had been none."

How then did mutiny spring up all at once on so many ships? An ingenious sailor explained this neatly to Lady Astor. Reported she: "A kind of passive resistance swept, as this sailor said, like a wave of gas over them all.

"As to the story of the Red Flag being sung, it was only sung by three men in the canteen who had taken too much drink."

10%! In their damp stone offices in Whitehall, last week, the Sea Lords of the British Admiralty pondered how to prevent another gassing of the fleet, another explosion of Jack Tar's touchy sense of fair play. Hardboiled, their Lordships reduced the greatest mutiny in 134 years to terms of money. They announced that Jack Tar will not have to take the 25% wage cut he mutinously refused; but he must take, added the Lords of Admiralty, a 10% cut.

Reports from British warboats last week were that Jack Tar everywhere took his 10% cut with glum obedience, showed no further symptoms of gas. P: First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Austen Chamberlain announced that Admiral Sir Michael Hodges, Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, had requested to be relieved because of illness (he was on sick leave during the mutiny); that the King had appointed Vice Admiral Sir John Kelly to succeed him.

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