Debutantes Celebrated

Laureate of the Royal Navy is Admiral Ronald Arthur Hopwood, 72, an oldtime gunnery officer who retired in 1919, but still writes for the Fleet. His poem The Laws of the Navy takes precedence among Navy men even over Kipling's If, hangs embellished in most officers' messes. At Christmas this year, a number of R. N. officers issued as their greeting cards copies of a new Hopwood opus entitled Secret Orders, celebrating the arrival in British waters of the 50 old U. S. destroyers.

The poet states a sailor's belief "That ships, when they're christened, on leaving the ways acquire a mysterious life of their own." He pictures the 50 U. S. vessels as knowing, even before Congress or Parliament, that they were called from their idle berths to action.

And so when the censors unshackled the truth

The fifty destroyers, who'd labored by day

As well as by night, to recapture their youth

Were not only ready but eager to weigh;

That something incredible really took place

Is amply confirmed by the facts of the case.

That even while Goering was spinning his webs,

Ere Goebbels consigned the flotilla to flames,

As trim and excited as so many debs

The fifty were bound for the Court of St. James',

Displaying the emblems that none can mistake

Their feathers--of steam, and the trains --in their wake.

Their well beloved home towns have "vanished astern

To rise with the cities and hamlets ahead, Increasing their speed as they presently learn That seas do not sever but join them instead,

And each in her turn as she peers through the foam Discovers with joy that there's no place like home!

For Churchill and Chelsea and Brighton and Clare

With Ripley and Reading and Lincoln*-- in short

The mothers of pilgrims brought up over there

Are waiting with pride to convey them to Court, As daughters of Freedom presenting their claim

To champion her cause in the family name!

* These are the British names given to the destroyers Herndon, Crowninshield, Cowell, A. P. Upshur, Shubrick, Bailey, Yarnall. Some other British rechristenings: Thatcher into Niagara, Mackenzie into Annapolis, Hunt into Broadway.

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