National Affairs: Smart & Efficient

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When the last land dissolves upon the horizon, the sea assumes its elemental, immutable aspect. Ships seen upon it then most truly represent man's control over inanimate nature" if not over himself. President Hoover, 36 miles at sea off the Virginia Capes last week, had a chance to ponder such verities. Over the horizon from the north, looming bullet-grey in the brightening morning, moved four-fifths of the nation's fighting seapower. As an engineer Mr. Hoover had to admire. As a President with instincts toward creative civilization, who had just engaged to limit such power mutually with other nations, he must have pondered.

"Backbone of the Fleet." The gentlest of swells and a light air from the west made it a perfect review morning, far happier than the morning in 1927 when Calvin Coolidge was first squeamish and had to sit down, then frankly seasick and had to lie prostrate below while the Fleet roared salutes for his momentarily unmanned office. President Hoover stood under the eight-inch guns of the Salt Lake City—10,000 tons, last crisp word in U. S. cruisers—and peered closely through binoculars at the trim masses of war machinery which soon came plowing past. From the light-cruiser division (eight strong, four abreast, led by the Detroit), then from the destroyer divisions (26 strong, four abreast, led by the cruiser Concord), then from the dreadnaughts (eleven strong, in three columns, led by the Texas),* finally from the 33,000-ton aircraft carriers Saratoga and Lexington, the presidential salute of 21 guns per ship plus the "Star-Spangled Banner" by each ship's band, came muffled from a mile away downwind. Alert at first, then seemingly lost in thought, the central figure stood with his fedora hat on during most of the spectacle. He did not reply when white-whiskered old Admiral Charles Frederick Hughes, soon-retiring Chief of Naval Operations,* ejaculated as the dreadnaughts passed: "I tell you those ships are the backbone of the Fleet!''

Stolen Show. The cruisers, destroyers and big submarines V-1 and V-2 (which had saluted by diving when abreast of the reviewing ship) all sped to the southeastern horizon, the dreadnaughts turning eastward into battle line, to prepare for a mock engagement between the Fleet's light forces and its "backbone." Meantime, having sounded their little salute guns, the Saratoga and Lexington turned westward, into the wind. The Salt Lake City turned with them so that she ran between. On the 2½-acre plateau decks of the two huge mother ships waited 150 airplanes, with all motors thundering, all propellers whirring brightly in the sun, mechanics in varicolored costumes moving among them in the artificial gale their blades created, to make final meticulous adjustments. In "sky forward" (crow's nest) of the Lexington, in rumpled grey suit and floppy hat, the Navy's prime War ace, Lieut. David Sinton Ingalls, now Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics, squinted down upon the scene, watching the flight officers' red flag on the bridge below. When a white flag appeared, their show would begin.