MANNERS & MORALS: Down the Hatch

I’ve drunk your health in company;

I’ve drunk your health alone;

I’ve drunk your health so many times,

I’ve damn near ruined my own.

This toast is a favorite with crusty old Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey. Last week such Halseyisms drew down the wrath of the Methodist Board of Temperance.

In a public statement, the Methodists noted that the Halsey memoirs, written with the help of Journalist J. Bryan III and serialized last summer in the Saturday Evening Post, showed the Admiral as a confirmed drinking man. He liked an occasional beer or Martini but his staple was Scotch and water. Admiral Halsey was quoted as saying: “There are exceptions, of course, but as a general rule, I never trust a fighting man who doesn’t smoke or drink.”

Halsey had unbosomed even more perilous confessions. A non-believer in the strict Navy regulations against liquor aboard ship, he had carried 100 gallons of bourbon for his pilots. Said the Admiral: “To a man who has just had a tense, hazardous flight or a wet watch there is no substitute for a tot of sound spirits, as the Royal Navy well knows.”

In six columns of print in their Clipsheet, the Methodists cried: “Shocking! . . . an astonishing breach of Naval discipline. . . .”As for teetotaling fighting men, “many of the greatest military men the world has produced have been notably abstemious.” Among them the Methodists listed Sergeant York, Jimmy Doolittle,* Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart and Stonewall Jackson, who “feared whiskey more than bullets.” “Perhaps,” said Clipsheet drily, “the Admiral would not ‘trust’ these men.”

After two days of headlines, Admiral Halsey, out in San Francisco, had not bothered to reply.

* An inclusion which might surprise ex-Lieut. General Doolittle (now a Shell Union Oil Corp. executive).