"OUR SPLENDID NAVAL SERVICE"

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 122, 25 May 1928, Page 15

"OUR SPLENDID NAVAL SERVICE"

A correspondent asks "The Post" to , publish the following comments from the periodical "The Patriot": — "Insignificant contretemps on board one of H.M. ships have most unfortunately led to the washing in public of some slightly soiled domestic linen. Tho question took a wrong turn at the start, when it was forced on. tho notice of the Houso of Commons, ever ready to intervene —by questions at least — in anything. It followed that the Press treated the Gibraltar courts-martial :iri: the full detail which has been accorded to spectacular murders and to sensational divorce case 3, now happily subject to restriction; Special correspondents were instructed to give actuality ,to formal proceedings,, we were regaled with "tense moments," the personal appearance of principals and witnesses, and a galaxy of photographers. The necessary result has been to mislead the public, and to give wholly exaggerated importance to trivial incidents arising solely from the association of incompatible temperaments. "A naval court-martial is the fairest tribunal in the world. The verdicts wore inevitable and the sentences just; but it need not be supposed that the careers of the two officers involved wilj be injuriously affected. The Navy ■will understand where the general public, ..confused by the unfamiliar details with which the Press has deluged it, can. only, bo misled. The pity is that the whole matter was not quietly taken in hand and settled by the Commandcr-in-Chief in the.Mediterranean; but tho injudicious proceedings in the House of Commons may havo made this impracticable. Publicity is not always beneficial, and in this ease it has been disadvantageous to the Royal Navy. We can only now hope that tho Houso of Commons and the Press will drop .matters with which they are unfit, to 'deal, and not further outrage tho sensibilities of. our splendid naval service, in which the enforcement of the old. traditions of honour, justice, and discipline stands out in brilliant contrast to tho universal Jaxity of judgment on tho most discreditable conduct of .many politicians." '