Why Coast Guards Drink

A hard-hitting debate was in progress in the House of Representatives one day last week over the killing of three smugglers on the rumrunner Black Duck

(TIME, Jan. 6 et seq.), when some 200 Congressmen on the floor suddenly threw their heads back, clapped their knees, laughed uproariously. In silence they had heard the Coast Guard accused of "bloody murder." Loud had been their applause when speakers defended the service and its law-enforcing methods. But what now struck them as funny was an explanation of why Coast Guardsmen drink the liquor they seize in the service of their country. The explainer was Representative Car roll L. Beedy of Maine, a consistent dry upon whose bald head Rear Admiral Frederick Chamberlayne Billard, the Coast Guard's commandant, had been looking down approvingly from the gallery as the Congressman praised the Admiral's service. Describing how the liquor-laden Flor del Mar had been towed into New London in a sinking condition, there to be hastily unloaded. Congressman Beedy said: "Those men--gobs as we call them-- ordinary seamen, yet red-blooded American boys, stood in water for three hours on that cold December night unloading this liquor. In the explosions which had occurred on board the ship, some of the boxes had been broken open and some of the gobs, to relieve themselves from the cold and suffering, opened a bottle and drank out of it."

Gusts of laughter swept through the House, drowning out the speaker's words. Finally he continued.

"You never will get together in the Coast Guard men who under those circumstances won't take a drink of liquor when it is open before them."

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