The Fleet's In

Seldom in history had an invading force been better behaved or more peacefully inclined. The 10,000 U.S. Navymen who swarmed into London last week from the battleships Wisconsin and New Jersey, the carriers Kearsarge and Randolph, were in holiday mood. The 2,140 downy-cheeked midshipmen were agog with excitement over the sights they had seen on Uncle Sam's "Show the Flag" junket to northwestern Europe.

In Sweden, the middies had shaken hands with spry old King Gustaf. They watched goggle-eyed on the beaches as buxom Swedish lasses publicly doffed their clothes to slip into scanty bathing suits in full public view. Later, a Swedish hostess was dumfounded when the adaptable middies, invited to take a dip in her private pool, promptly stripped to the buff and dove in. When she complained to a senior officer, he told her that the boys thought they were following the local custom. In Edinburgh, like their elder brothers in wartime, they had been greeted by street urchins calling "Any gum, chum?" Then came London.

"More than 200 American sailors . . . and British Guardsmen fought a pitched battle in Piccadilly early today," screamed the Daily Mail. The story could not have been less true. The sailors, explained Scotland Yard later, had only stood by amiably while London's bobbies rounded up an agile civilian drunk. The only riot remotely concerning the Navymen themselves occurred in Tottenham Court Road when authorities forgot to tell enlisted men about a dance scheduled at the Paramount Dance Hall. Only 50 sailors showed up. A shore patrol officer stopped by to explain this statistical affront to 450 disappointed London girls. The ladies, with screams and threats, drove him into the street to round up more escorts. He got another 50.

Wrote William Barkley, London Daily Express columnist, last week: "The favorite roosting perch of the visiting sailors ... is Piccadilly's statue of Eros (TIME, July 7), reset up just in time for this naval occasion. Happy, contented, their jaws working overtime, there they sit, apparently hypnotized by London's traffic swirling about them. Quick census ... at 3:30 yesterday: 37 sailors. There were a few girls too--about 37."

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