Unseemly Spectacle

No sooner did Colonel William Mitchell--he that was a General, one of "Pershing's men" who dashed so furiously about France in a special Renault, who tore through bursting skies to combat, who swaggered most gloriously--no sooner did he cease berating the elderly admirals of Washington than other admirals on the Pacific were faced--so the press would have it--with a most embarrassing test.

Seventy miles off San Pedro, Calif., targets simulated an enemy fleet. Above them at 6,000 feet coursed real airplanes which trailed behind them great cloth funnels to be used as targets.

These apocryphal invaders swept down upon nearly 60 ships of the U. S. Navy, steaming at 20 miles per hour. Of a sudden, the fleet buried itself under a mountain of smoke and fire, black and yellow with a glean of crimson. For six minutes--it seemed six hours-- tons of steel hurtled through the black smoke--some of it went in long low curves ten miles toward "the enemy ships," some went in steep parabolas toward the enemy aircraft. When all was calm, it was apparent that the enemy ships were well smashed. But the airplanes? According to Lieutenant Commander James H. Strong, 44 anti-aircraft guns on 11 dreadnaughts in 20 rounds of fire (880 shots) failed to score a single hit upon the trailing air-targets.

It was a press-scandal. Secretary of the Navy Wilbur, at Washington, scarcely crediting this report, called upon Commander-in-Chief Admiral Robert Coontz for an official report.

To the mind of the Secretary, it was not only scandal, but also a danger; for he has often made clear to his fellow-countrymen that his home state, California, was most susceptible to attack.

Next day, as if in response to Mr. Wilbur's fears, came good news. The battleship Tennessee, in a separate test, had plugged in two attacking airplanes' targets. Mr. Wilbur immediately made the good news public.

It was about this time that Colonel Mitchell read in the Review of Reviews a character-sketch of himself by Clinton W. Gilbert, famed correspondent of Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis' newspapers, in which Mr. Gilbert painted 1) the "unseemly spectacle" of an Army general telling, in moments opportune and inopportune, "how he could sink the entire U. S. Navy with one hand" and 2) the "unseemly spectacle" of "conservatism and stupidity charged with the keeping of the walls of safety about our land."