President Roosevelt last week ordered the only U. S. war boat in the Mediterranean, the brand new destroyer Dale, to up anchor at Leghorn, Italy and steam to Washington in time for the celebration of Navy Day. Oct. 28.
Meanwhile 204-lb. British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was showing 185-lb. Benito Mussolini, whom most Britons consider a "Big Bully," how to be a Bigger Bully while remaining every inch an English Gentleman.
Italians, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans and other foreigners—but not His Majesty's subjects in the United Kingdom —daily received news that John Bull in the person of Squire Baldwin was hurling into the Mediterranean last week the most colossal and unprecedented array of war boats in modern times, denuding the British Isles themselves of virtually all sea defense.
Fleet movements as they occurred were not reported in British papers, by request of the Admiralty. Alien news services were encouraged to transmit via London every fact they could glean about the sudden, sensational and unannounced dispatching of the British Home Fleet, which was scheduled last week to be maneuvering off Scotland, to join the British Mediterranean Fleet. With charm and polish, Admiralty officials said that they "really did not know" the whereabouts of Britain's famed super-warboats, the Hood, the Rodney and the Nelson.
Mare Nostrum. When the British Home Fleet's flagship Nelson left Portland for Gibraltar this departure was officially described as "for one day's maneuver." Previously the Renown and the Hood and three smaller ships had slipped away so unobtrusively that those of their 6,000 officers & crew who happened to be ashore were recalled on a few hours' notice spread by flashing the order on cinema screens at Portland and circulating it among the pubs. In strict technicality the Admiralty's knowledge of exactly where the Home Fleet might be was locked in the resolute bosom of the fleet's immediate commander aboard the 33,500-ton battleship Nelson, Admiral Sir Roger Roland Charles Backhouse (pronounced back-house).
Gunnery is Admiral Backhouse's specialty and his favorite yarn is about a retired gunner's mate who dozed off and let his evening newspaper fall against the red-hot kitchen stove. "Fire!'" screamed his wife as the paper blazed. Waking up with a start, the mate rammed the family cat into the oven, banged the door and roared, "Ready, Sir." Though the United Kingdom never heard last week that whimsical Admiral Backhouse & Home Fleet had sailed for Gibraltar, the fact of their arrival finally appeared tucked quietly away in London papers, while world headlines were screaming "WAR!" from Chicago to Canton.