"The baseball games have given us a welcome chance to show our friendship for the American bluejackets. It is the custom to provide each member of a British shore-leave party with tickets good for two pints of beer at the Recreation Club. The Yank ships, being teetotallers, did not do this, and so the poor chaps would have had to get on without any beer if we had not come to their rescue. Soon it became quite the regular thing for a British sailor to provide his Yankee chum with half his beer-tickets, and, as many of the days were sweltering hot, you may believe they were appreciated. As the present beer we get does not contain enough alcohol to intoxicate a fly, American mothers need have no fear that there is anything in this action calculated to lead their sailor boys astray.
"I need hardly say that the Yanks have reciprocated every time they had a chance. I was having tea at the Naval Club a few days, and, having neglected to bring any sugar ashore from the ship, I was about to do the best I could without it, when an American sailor reached over from the next table and handed me his ration, saying that he had come provided with an extra one for just that purpose. And it was fine white sugar, too. I have seen the same thing happen a number of times. The Yanks seem to be allowed an extra lot of sugar and sweets to make up for not having grog. They tell me that they don't miss the latter very badly, and I can't say that they seem any the worse for not having it. Perhaps that is the one thing that we have worried most about since the Yankees came--as to whether or not their example would cause the British ships to 'go dry' too. Who can say? Stranger things have happened, but the change will hardly come during the war anyhow.
"The few weeks' sport at this Base gave the men a chance to meet in such a way that they could form real friendships, and I know of a number of instances where British sailors have asked Yankees to visit them in their homes if ever there is a chance that the leaves work out favourable to that arrangement. We found that we had a great many things in common with them; so much so that, writing some weeks after these meetings, it seems awkward to speak of them as Yanks at all, they have become so much part and parcel of ourselves.