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"Intensive Persuasion." Next day the captains of all the warships in Cromarty Firth read the Admiralty's new orders to their crews. Ships were ordered to put out to sea and return to their home ports. British papers glossed over the next few hours: they were the tensest in the entire affair. Ringleaders refused to believe that once at sea they would not be sent to distant stations in punishment. It took two hours to get the anchors up. Grim laced sub-lieutenants slipped into their lockers for side arms. Correspondents passed over what happened below decks before the fleet steamed for home in one portentous sentence: "Officers were obliged to employ intensive persuasion."
British Discipline, Several years ago the Illustrated London News printed a photograph from the U. S. cinema What Price Glory? It showed a disheveled, drunken Captain Flagg scuffling with Sergeant Quirt over an estaminet table. Below was a pithy caption: "Not British Discipline." Since then British Discipline has suffered many a rude shock. There was the disgraceful affair off Malta in 1928 when Rear Admiral Bernard St. George Collard was compulsorily retired for shameful conduct, such as insulting Bandmaster Percy Barnacle (TIME, March 6, 1928 et seq.). Last January the crew of the submarine tender Lucia mutinied on a rumor that their Christmas leave was to be cancelled and that they were to paint ship on Sunday (TIME, Jan. 19). All papers last week harked back to the great mutiny of 1797 when the underpaid, scurvy-ridden crews off Spithead and off the Nore turned on their officers. That came in the British Navy's most glorious period. Nelson had just helped win the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. Six months after the mutiny Admiral Duncan beat the Dutch at Camperdown.