AMERICAN ADMIRAL

Evening Star, Issue 19714, 15 November 1927, Page 5

AMERICAN ADMIRAL

HILARY P. JONES RETIRING REACHED THE AGE LIMIT. Preas Association—By Telegraph—Copj right WASHINGTON, November 13. Admiral Hilary Jones, senior Hag officer and American naval expert at the Geneva Conference, 'will retire tomorrow on account of reaching the age limit of 04 after 47 years’ service. REAR-ADMIRAL E. HILARY P. JONES. Some American papers are prepared to liken Rear-admiral Hilary Pollard Jones to a famous naval man of a past generation—Captain Paul Jones especially in regard to the iaet that, besides being naval officers both were diplomats. At the Geneva Naval Conference. which broke down, Rear-ad-miral Jones was tho official associate of Mr Hugh S. Gibson, the American Ambassador, It is stated that be was selected for the job because he possessed, over and above an admirable equipment of professional knowledge, tho quality of “ horse sense.” Though this is not a nautical term, and this is also an age of motor traffic, everybody knows what is meant by “ horse flense.” As a matter of fact, Admiral Jones comes from a part of the United States where the phrase, with its tang of the pasture rather than the sea, has a special currency. He was born in Hanover County, Virginia, and his birth fell literally in tho midst of the Civil ’War, so that his star was military rather than naval. Young Hilary Joiies used the magic of childhood to turn his mother’s chicken coops into ships of war. and thus early he won from his uncle, Major Horace Jones, the title of “admiral.” though that excellent gentleman had no idea how prophetic his brevet was. _ Neither lie nor the boy’s mother realised that the barnyard admiral was to be the first sailor in his country to bear the title “ Admiral of the Fleet.” Starting out on his career as a naval man. young Jones came out of his class in 1884 seventeenth on the list, while that vea r was also famous for the passing out of tho school of many admirals to ho. After two years at sea, as was required in those days, he was commissioned ensign a + . the ago of twentythree, and assigned to tho corvette Nipsic, of 800 tons. Tt was about this time that the Samoa trouble started, and the Nipsic was sent to Apia with the A 7 andalia. and Trenton, and, though the ship did not see any actual fighting, she was in tho track ol tho famous gale which wrecked all_ the ships in Apia Harbor, except the Britisli warship Calliope. The Nipsic was beached beside the German gunboat Eber, but after tho pale was refloated, and so ended the coming admiral’s first real experience of t,ho_ sen. Rearadmiral Jones's services in the Great War won him the Distinguished Ser vice Medal, and he was successively in command ol one of the patrol forces, and later of a flotilla of cruisers known as tho “Raider Guard.” After the war he commanded the Atlantic fleet ns admiral, and in 3 was the first to receive tho title Admiral of the Fleet, equivalent to Commandcr-in-Chief of all Ihe American naval forces afloat.