Larboard Watch, Ahoy!
One of the welcome things about the ultimate return of peace will be a return to civilian standards which on many a campus have been long in abeyance. A dormitory will cease to pretend it is a ship of the line. A floor will no longer masquerade as a deck. The college clock will strike the hours as civilians (and one suspects most Navy men) really think of them. The day will still consist of 24 hours, but they will be spoken of in groups of 12. The student will no longer speak glibly of "1730 hours" when what he really means is half-past five in the afternoon.
It isn't that the nautical system is inefficient. It is only that it is inconvenient for us landsmen. It irks us to think of 12:30 a.m. as 0030 hours. When the day progresses beyond that blessed moment when the sun is over the yardarm, telling the time becomes a complicated matter of subtraction. One must deduct 12 from "13 hours" to remember that it is 1 o'clock. As for making the college clock chime in conformity to the custom of the ship's bell in the fo'c'sle, it must be to most a confounded nuisance. Why should seven bells mean that it is half-past three in the afternoon? It's something we landlubbers are not used to. Does it bother us to have a 3:30 p.m. and a 3:30 a.m.? No. Save in the Land of the Midnight Sun they're as different as chalk and cheese and nobody is likely to mix them up.
Europe has for years used the 24-hour clock in making up its railroad schedules, but the custom has never taken root here save as a matter of the military and naval dials. With sublime inconsistency, the ship's bell tolls half-hours from one to eight every four hours, day and night alike, and one has to resort to elaborate circumlocutions as to "middle watch," "morning watch" and a choice assortment of dog-watches to identify t'other from which. However, we landsmen have cheerfully put up with this, realizing we were in a war, and that "inter arma legessilent." It will be a relief when peace returns and we can stop playing we're sailors so far as the clock is concerned.
