ing the World War, and the Navy is learning that peace with Coolidge and Wilbur in command is hell.

G

OVERNMENT circles in Washington, whose credo is that any Secretary of the Navy is certain to be amusing, are constantly circulating the latest story regarding Mr. Wilbur and the anecdotes usually concern his most recent speech, press release, or other uttered remark. The most famous of all, one which has lost none of its popularity through age, refers to an ill-fated trip to the Pacific coast in the fall of 1924. Mr. Wilbur, having been in office for but six months, was unaware of the extent to which Mr. Coolidge's love for economy recoiled from naval appropriations. He was standing for "a 100 per cent Navy, equal to that of any other Power," was highly elated over his appointment, and was ready to give his views on almost anything.

tions and admiration for the work of President Wilson. And this with a Presidential campaign under way!

"Tell him to come home," Mr. Coolidge is supposed to have growled. "Tell him to take an airplane."

The President, according to sophisticated Washington gossip, did not mean the airplane part literally. It was said in sardonic jest. But a member of the executive staff telegraphed Mr. Wilbur that his presence in Washington was imperative, and that the President had ordered him thither at once. Whereupon the Secretary of the Navy telephoned frantically all over California for a plane, hopped into it, soared after the Overland Limited, which had already left, and arrived, hot and panting, in Washington. He explained to newspaper men that he was needed on "urgent naval matters."

He was, however, kept waiting for several days before being received at the White House, and good taste demands that a veil be drawn over what took place. Mr. Wilbur remained in Washington, at all events, until Mr. Coolidge had been safely re-elected, and from that day his speches have been in harmony with the philosophies of the President.

peatedly been in trouble. When "What Price Glory?" opened in New York, he remarked that its language was no longer typical of "a navy made clean" and was gently kidded for his naïveté. When the Shenandoah was wrecked over Ohio, having been ordered to fly into thunder-storms to boost State fairs and the Republican Party, he flatly contradicted the widow of its commander, who said that her husband had protested against the flight. He had never seen, it turned out, letters in the files of the Navy Department supporting Mrs. Lansdowne's contention. When a naval arsenal in New Jersey was struck by lightning, causing a score of deaths and $80,000,000 in destruction, Mr. Wilbur insisted that "all known precautions had been taken." He learned, too late, that the commandant of the arsenal had complained regarding lack of adequate safeguards. Similarly, when two aviators flying to Honolulu believed that they could not go on, the Secretary of the Navy rebuked them for having annoyed the naval vessels in the vicinity, and demanded to know why they had not sent another radio canceling the call for assistance. He was then informed, having managed to appear quite silly, that the

plane's wireless had gone dead immediately after the S. O. S.

Some of Mr. Wilbur's misstatements are due to his complete faith in the bureaucrats of the Navy Department. Others are inspired by an optimism which is an outstanding characteristic of the man and which causes him to enlarge hopes into actualities. This is, inevitably, dangerous for any executive, and occasionally leaves Mr. Wilbur far out, as the saying is, on a limb. It was he insisted early in 1924, "preposterous that the Navy had fallen behind Great Britain and Japan in strength, speed, or efficiency. A few months later he said that $110,000,000 must be appropriated annually for twenty years if the 5-5-3 ratio established at the Limitation of Armament Conference was to be maintained. His 1925 report to the Presi dent was, on the whole, sunnily cheerful despite the loss of the S-51 and the Shenandoah, and in 1926 his chief com plaint was regarding a reduced personnel. I have attempted, already, to point out that in his 1927 summation he shows fairly clearly that the United States Navy is on the rocks because of Cool idge economy. Yet he manages to say:

"During the year there have been no major casualties. The morale of the Navy has been maintained at a high plane."

This was published in the newspapers of December 11. A week later the Slay at the bottom of the sea off Prov incetown, Massachusetts, with forty men on board. Seldom has the Nation waited in such agony as when the diver learned, after twenty-four hours ha passed, that at least six were alive. Sel dom has public opinion been so unani mous that officialdom fussed and fiddled and bungled while the men in that cold steel coffin hammered out piteous appeal to hurry. In the end they died, thes men who had been buried alive, and the investigations to determine the responsi bility are still under way. Partly it was because the gods of the weather brough mountainous seas. But partly, too, i was because the Navy's salvage equip ment was inadequate. It is not the firs time that men have thus perished; only two years ago the S-51 went down and thirty-six lives were lost. If the Nav learned anything from the earlier disas ter, it has not, as this is being written been able to show it.

Yet Mr. Wilbur and the High Com mand at Washington-the staff admi rals, the experts, and the rest-seem to be as incurably cheerful as ever. They

tional safety appliances might have been installed. They intimate that it was the dead men of the S-4, who no longer can speak, who were at fault and that the naval inquiries will so determine. Suggestions that the Navy should have proper salvage vessels, that submarines should not operate in shipping lanes, that tenders supposed to accompany them should really do so-these suggestions made by shocked civilians will "go through proper channels." The submarine, after all, is built to fight and not to be rescued, and the men who go under the sea in ships must die from time to time. And certainly we of the High Command, grown old and gray and possibly wise, have the situation well in hand and everything is for the best. But I grow bitter

Nor infrequently, when raised to the

eminence of Cabinet rank, men achieve inflated notions of their importance. But Mr. Wilbur soon demonstrated that he would remain just folks. No other high Government official was so easy to approach, and during his first conferences with the correspondents he

He

newspaper men, calling for their introductory visit, saw a tall, broad, elderly man standing behind his desk looking at them from behind his spectacles. seemed a little self-conscious as they filed in, a trifle over-eager. One of Wilbur's talents is, however, a facility in remembering names and faces, and as the months passed he came to know most of the writers. Gradually, too, he adopted an air not unlike that of the superintendent of a Sunday school. He joked with them, and seemed to be on the point of expressing pleasure that "so many bright faces" were gathered before him. One afternoon he was holding forth on technical details of the Navy's judicial system, one of his hobbies. The correspondents were frankly bored and one or two were getting sleepy.

"Do you understand what I am explaining?" he suddenly asked one reporter, whose eyes had a far-away expression.

"No, Mr. Secretary, I'm frank to say I don't," was the answer.

"Ah," murmured Wilbur, shaking his head in sorrow, "I thought not."

Traces of his Bible-class days are

present, too, when some new correspondent attends a press conference. Wilbur then goes out of his way to welcome the stranger, to make him feel at home. He has been known to approach with outstretched hand, his eyes beaming cordiality.

"My name's Wilbur," he explains. "I don't believe I have met you before."

Official Washington, hearing of this, snickered. It burst into guffaws when it learned that Wilbur had been a writer of bedtime stories and that in "The Bear Family at Home" were descriptions of how "The Little-Bear-Cub-thatWould-Not-Mind-His-Papa" got into difficulties almost as great as the LittleSecretary of the Navy Who Would-Not-Mind-Mr. Coolidge. At one

or two small dinner parties, to which the Secretary of the Navy had not been invited, enterprising hostesses read selections from his literary works, a favorite passage being Mr. Wilbur's graphic recital of a circus train wreck in which "The Little Bear Cub Got Back into the Woods Again:"

One night, after the wagons and the animals had all been put on board the cars, the fireman rang the bell, and the engineer started the train, and away it went, whistling and coughing down the track. The animals were so used to the train going rattle-te-bang, rattle-te-bang, all night long, that they all went to sleep.

While the animals and every one on the train, except the engineer and the fireman, were asleep, the engineer looked ahead and suddenly saw a big rock on the track. He blew the whistle, "Toot-toot," to call the brakemen, and the brakemen ran as fast as they could and began to put on the brakes to stop the train, but the train came nearer and nearer to the big rock.

The poor engineer couldn't stop the train, and the brakemen couldn't stop the train, so the engine ran into the rock and was knocked off the track, and turned a somersault and was smashed all to pieces, and all the cars ran off the track into a ditch, so that the animals got out of their cages and found they were free.

that he should have written them; he is devoted to children and for decades has spun fairy tales to please them. He was born in Boonesboro, a small Iowa village, in 1867, attended the public schools there until his family moved to North Dakota when he was fifteen, and went to the Naval Academy quite by accident two years later.

"My father," he recalls, "was a lawyer who specialized in real estate. I remember that he owned a small coal mine and that my earliest ambition was to drive one of the mules. But when I was about to graduate from high school at Jamestown, North Dakota, three candidates were suggested for Annapolis. The other two couldn't go, so I accepted."

Despite his size and his hitch-kicking talents he was a strapping youth and today weighs about 230 pounds-the youthful Wilbur was primarily a student, a contemplative young man who graduated from Annapolis third in his class. Few commissions were awarded in those days, and this must have pleased him, for he had decided to study law. Upon graduating in 1888, he hurried to Los Angeles, where his parents, like so many other Iowans, had migrated. He taught school for a year, working with his law books at night, and in 1890 was admitted to the bar.

Wilbur became in a short time one of the legal lights of California, and rose from district attorney of Los Angeles County to Judge of the Superior Court. Then he was elevated to the Supreme Court, and eventually became its Presiding Justice. Meanwhile, always interested in children, his avocation became their moral and physical betterment. He revised the children's code, sat as a judge of the Children's Court, organized the Boys' Brigade, a semi-military organization, lectured at the Y. M. C. A., and became the first chief of the Los Angeles Boy Scouts. He lived in San Francisco while head of the Supreme Court, and there taught a Bible class still known as "Judge Wilbur's Public Welfare Class." The first of his bedtime stories were written almost twenty years ago, when his daughter and three sons were youngsters.

Only partially did Mr. Wilbur fulfill the high hopes of the American admiralty when it learned that one of its own was coming to rule. The private office of the Secretary of the Navy took on, it is true, a more nautical appearance. Visitors are sometimes shown a photograph of the Constellation, an old-time training ship, and their attention is

rigging.

"That's the Secretary of the Navy,” Mr. Wilbur says with pride. "I made my cruise on that ship while I was at the Academy. I visited it a year or so ago, and would have liked to climb up there again. But I was afraid people might think I was trying to show off."

A

LL of this is pleasant. Members of the class of 1888 are gratified to see on the wall the warrant on which Mr. Wilbur went to Annapolis occupying a position of honor next to the formal document whereby Mr. Coolidge made him Secretary of the Navy. One can drop in to talk over the old days. It has developed, too, that few complaints regarding red tape are likely to come from the Secretary; that he is inclined to bend a sympathetic ear toward official excuses and alibis. On only one occasion has he been really angry, and that was when a naval captain was accused of discourtesy to some Washington correspondents invited to take a flight in a Navy dirigible. His wrath was then terrible. The unfortunate officer faced arrest, a court martial, the loss of all possibility of promotion, and even dismissal from the service. It was only when the reporters themselves intervened and asked for mercy that Mr. Wilbur relented. Ordinarily, of course, he is on the best of terms with his offi

cers.

The Navy bureaucrats learned to their sorrow, though, that Mr. Wilbur's early belief in the virtue of a large navy was not to endure. It turned out that his policies were to be shaped, without exception, by the Vermonter in the White House. Not even grave needs of the service, equipment that was falling to pieces, a dwindling personnel, obsolete vessels, could force him to oppose the will of his chief. The new Secretary proved, too, to be almost a Daniels with respect to drinking and frowned upon the serving of cocktails at parties. He has insisted upon courts martial for officers and men, even for two elderly naval nurses, found with so much as a quart of liquor in their possession. He has approved dismissal of one or two Annapolis youths guilty of intoxication, a painful duty, since he is deeply attached to the young men of the Academy and lectures before their Christian Association twice a year.

Men in public life are usually judged by what they say, and not by what they do. Chiefly in this, I think, lies the

perhaps, any worse than some of those who held the post before him. His mis takes are of the head, and not of the heart. There is none in Washington to assail his honesty, and, although a parti san Democratic Congressman may brand him a "fuddy-duddy," the attitude of the Republicans is that of the Western saloon-keeper who posted this sign:

"Don't shoot the pianist. He is doing the best he can."

In the things he has said, it is my point, Mr. Wilbur has been in a class by himself. It is not only that he is a bad politician-this might be a virtue in a man of force willing to fight for his convictions. It is that he is so naïvely simple. He says one thing which offends Mr. Coolidge and many which offend common sense. When the searchlight of public indication swings toward the Navy Department to pierce the fog of officialdom, he remarks, as did the rescue forces to the dying men of the S-4, that "everything possible is being done." And so frequently Mr. Wilbur is merely ridiculous, as, for instance, when the new Navy dirigible was being christened. A resident of Los Angeles in former years, and closely identified with that city, he explained the real significance of the name:

When the Prince of Peace was born in Bethlehem the angels sang to men, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men." In remembrance of this angel song I will name the ship Los Angeles.

Within a few weeks Chambers of Commerce and Rotary Clubs in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle had filed protests.

Mr. Wilbur is not an old man. He has just turned sixty. But the impression is inescapable to any one who has talked with him and with those who know him well that his view-point is that of the Elder Statesmen. He is, I repeat, gentle and amiable. He is proud that 1,000,000 lithographs of Old Ironsides have been sold and that the ship will be saved. He loves the men who were with him at Annapolis and who now, in some cases, are his advisers. He believes with a deep conviction that the Navy grows better year by year, in the enlisted personnel's morality if not in fighting efficiency. In his 1927 report, the one in which he is forced to admit the ravages of economy, he says that when the fleet was in New York the (Continued on page 153)